


Pulling Me Under (Beneath the Waves)

by Malevelynce



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Astronomy, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Drowning, Eventual Happy Ending, Gay Keith (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Keith and Shiro are Adoptive Siblings, Klance Reverse Bang 2018, M/M, Mermaid Hunk, Ocean, Platonic Heith, Platonic Kidge, Surfer Lance (Voltron), Swearing, conflicted keith, keith/matt - Freeform, mermaid Pidge, mermaid keith, pidge is really old, this wasn't supposed to be this long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-04-29 03:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 38,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14463786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malevelynce/pseuds/Malevelynce
Summary: Keith has recently been turned into a mermaid, an experience leaving him crawling back toward the surface for any hope of once again becoming human. Pidge and Hunk are the best of friends and immediately take Keith under their wing to help him learn the ways of being a mermaid. But, it’s Lance, a surfer at the beach for the summer, who’s eyes truly entice him. In a game where humanity and love are the pawns, Keith is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure he emerges the victor.





	1. Drowning

**Author's Note:**

> This is my piece for Klance Reverse Bang 2018!  
> I worked with the lovely Viraseii on this project! Please check them out here: http://viraseii.tumblr.com/  
> I really had a lot of fun writing this piece and I hope you enjoy reading it, thanks! <3

Sunlight filtering through the water refracts in such a way that it’s not different enough to pinpoint the contrast, but Keith knew something was off. His eyes squinted open, pain pulsating in every joint, his head aching, pressure enfolding him. There was a rock jabbing into the space between his ribcage and his hip as he lay sprawled out on his back. He put a hand to his forehead, letting out a moan as he pushed himself upright.

And that’s when he remembered. He remembered the way the water had engulfed him like a cold, suffocating kiss. He remembered the way the sand had felt between his toes as he clawed for the surface, watching his hope slip away like each dying ray of sunlight. He remembered the way the saltwater stung his eyes as his tears refused to fall, pain like no other crushing in on him. He remembered the way it had become too much to bear, then the way darkness had caressed his eyes closed and pulled him away from everything.

But now his eyes were open. His eyes were painfully open and there was no way to ignore it. Nothing but water all around him yet he was breathing fine. Too deep for sunlight to pass through yet it was bright and clear. Fish swam by him without taking a moment to stare at the human sitting against a rock at the bottom of the sea.

And, of course, the angry red tail, scales climbing up his stomach, wasn’t something he could easily look past. On his back, a large fin spanned from in between his shoulder blades down to his lower back. Wrapped around his arms were these strange crimson ribbons (which looked pretty badass, but he didn’t quite take note of it in his current state). Along with that, obviously, lay three long gills on each side of his neck, expelling water faster than he was choking on it. Because, of course, he wasn’t a human anymore, was he? He was a mermaid. He was a goddamn mermaid and the first thing he found out was that mermaids can, in fact, cry.

Tucking his tail against his chest, Keith buried his face into his scales and sobbed. One mistake, one stupid mistake, and Keith was cursed to a life of solitude. Nothing but the great expanse of water, frigid and lonely.

His tears bubbled at his lashes and floated around him, something odd he didn’t care to marvel at in the moment. But as he traced the paths of his tears intermingling with the weak sunlight, he caught sight of something green whipping around the corner of the outcropping he was sitting by. Something much too big to be a fish.

Going to wipe away his tears, he noticed how different the sensation was of his bony fingers against his skin, submerged so deep. Shaking off the stupid novelties of being a goddamn mermaid, he managed to swim around the corner, awkwardly attempted to kick his legs at first. But once he took a deep breath and relinquished the fact that he no longer had legs, he gave a big flick of his tail. The feeling of the water rushing past him faster than ever before was exhilarating, and he forgot for a moment the sadness of loss.

As he rounded the corner, he saw the green-tailed mermaid staring back at him with wide eyes as she slurped a sea snail out of a conch. “Hey,” she greeted nervously.

And there were more tears floating around him as he gave a tremendous push through the water, catapulting himself into her. She gave a screech as he wrapped his arms around her tiny shoulders, burying his face into her neck. “Woah, holy shit. Guppy, get off me!”

She attempted to shove the distraught boy off her, but he continued to clutch her awkwardly, sobbing out in a cracked voice, “I-I thought I was all alone. I th-thought I would be stuck here all by myself.”

Rolling her eyes, she hesitantly rubbed an awkward hand in a circle on his back, feeling his tears filter through her hair as they floated upward, his blubbering not seeming like it was going to come to end anytime soon. So she tredded the water gently, waiting it out. Keith was grateful the mermaid hadn’t attempted harder to break out of his hold, because having contact with another person was the best thing for Keith in that moment.

“Hey, Pidge! I found a blue scallop shell I was thinking we coul--oh! Well it looks like you found something better, huh?” A larger mermaid with a shimmering gold tail and smooth dark skin swam over to them. With the other mermaid’s voice, Keith peeled himself off the girl and wiped at his eyes.

The gold one extended a smile and a concerned brow as he introduced himself, “I’m Hunk and this is Pidge.” He nodded to the girl with emerald scales who was no longer looking at him but instead had grabbed the blue shell from Hunk, admiring it with a keen eye. “I haven’t seen a fresh mermaid in awhile, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“I’m, uh, Keith.” He bit his lip and rubbed at his nose, sniffling (an odd feeling in the water). “Are there . . . more mermaids?” While he wasn’t quite sure he could trust this odd couple, Keith was confused and scared and he wasn’t going to get a better offer anywhere else.

Hunk’s laughter made Keith flush, realizing that his question must have been dumb. But as he laughed, Keith felt no malicious intent in the wind chime of his chuckle. “There are a whole lot more mermaids, guppy.”

Swallowing, Keith nodded and awkwardly played with his fingers, avoiding his gaze. “I, uh, I don’t really know what to do now,” he confessed, finally looking Hunk in the eye.

“Well, Pidge and I normally stay out of the city--corrupt monarchy and all that--but we can show you that and then you can crash with us for the night?” Hunk’s chocolate brown eyes were warm and inviting, his gold scales reflecting the sunlight, almost appearing to glow.

Keith hardly had the time to mull it over when his instincts were pushing the words out of his mouth, “Sure, that sounds good.” But, in all honesty, he was skeptical of how quickly the mermaids had dropped everything just to help him out. It was all a little, dare he say, fishy?

But off they went, Pidge putting the shell away in a small pouch at her hip. The two moved fast through the water, and Keith struggled to stay up, but when he got beside Pidge, he ran an unnecessary hand through his hair and looked off to the side.

“Pidge, uh, I, well, I’m sorry, um, for crying on you,” Keith sputtered, blush climbing his cheeks.

The girl let out an unattractive snort and waved a hand idly in his direction. “Don’t worry about it, guppy.” With a deep breath she looked at Keith and admitted, “It may have been over five hundred years ago, but I still remember my first day in the water.”

And that’s when Keith sucked in much more water than his lungs (well, his gills, he guessed) could process, his body convulsing and doubling over as he coughed violently. Pidge rolled her eyes, crossing her arms and slowing to a stop beside the boy. Looking at her with stern eyes, Hunk patted Keith gently on the back.

“You’re more than five hundred years old!?” The girl was tiny. She was obvious short, though with the tail, Keith didn’t really care to guess exactly how tall (or long, maybe?) she was. A raggedy excuse of a bandage or piece of cloth was wrapped around her chest, a necklace with a spiral shell hanging above her belly button, and bent glasses sat upon her nose. If she had been alive that long, maybe she should have invested in some quality clothes.

Pidge winked. “Lesson number one: mermaids don’t die of natural causes.”

“Unless you call shark attacks natural causes,” Hunk snorted, beginning to swim off again, Pidge soon in his wake. Keith had to take a moment to shake the ice from his blood at Hunk’s nonchalant comment. Swallowing back nervous bile, Keith flicked his tail and joined the other two.

They swam past extraordinary aquatic feats that Keith could have taken years marveling, yet the other two mermaids swam right past without a second look. Fish of all shapes and sizes and colors dodged in and out of beautiful reefs. It was all too much to take in.

But soon enough, Hunk and Pidge were slowing as they reached a large set of gates barring the entrance of a huge cave. He was honestly a little taken aback at his own casual perception of a city hidden inside a gigantic underwater mountain. Shaking his head, he tried not to mull on the fact that even within such a short time span, he was already getting used to himself, his new life, everything.

A mermaid with a powerful silver tail stood with a trident outside the gates, asking the mermaids who wanted to enter a series of questions. When the group came up to her, Pidge did all the talking, “Ryner, darling, how are you?”

The guard smiled and offered polite conversation before letting the three of them pass without even asking their business in the city. Keith opened his mouth to ask when Hunk patted him on the shoulder and whispered, “She even knows the queen.”

Even as his head was still spinning, they swam through a small section of tunnel, the only light coming from odd torch-like things with a pale blue glow stuck on the wall. A very similar thing happened when they reached the next gate, but Keith wasn’t listening to the conversation as he marveled at the sight beyond the thick bars of the gate.

Spires and lofty buildings of varying shapes and sizes towered above them. Covering the entire city was an intricate lace of coral and climbing plants, light falling onto the white sand in delicate designs. The craziest part, to Keith, was that mermaids swam far above them, entering buildings from fifty stories up. He guessed they had no use for stairs without legs, but it hadn’t quite occurred to him until he was standing at the entrance of this great city, his mouth dropped open and his breath stolen from him.

But, even all that dulled in comparison to the majestic palace at the end of the main road they were standing on. It glimmered in the sunlight, seemingly made out of gold, four large turrets erupting on the corners of the palace, huge columns accenting the entrance. It looked impossibly huge and endlessly gorgeous.

Pidge let a wide grin cross her face as the gate opened and the three mermaids swam into the city. “Welcome to Atlantia, the city where hopes and dreams die.”

Once again, translating for the situation, Hunk muttered in Keith’s ear, “While Pidge may know the queen, she has been in power for over a thousand years. Pidge doesn’t really agree with all of her, uh, techniques.”

Pidge turned on them with a deadly look in her eye, “And by techniques you mean that anyone who catches an inkling of treason on their name is immediately given to the Baku Garden? It’s murder, Hunk, and you know it.” Her voice was hushed and panicked as she scanned the streets around her.

“What’s the Baki Garden?” Keith asked loudly, oblivious to the tense air surrounding the topic as he leaned in closer to Pidge and Hunk with bright eyes.

Pidge snapped around and slapped a hand over Keith’s mouth, anger aflame in her honey-brown eyes. “You must be careful, guppy.” Her voice, deathly calm and wracked with something akin to fear, stilled Keith’s heart within in his chest and made his hair stand on end. “We do not speak of things regarding this matter within city limits, understand?”

Nervously nodding, Keith’s wide eyes never strayed from Pidge’s as she slowly removed her hand and turned away from him. Hunk wrapped his arm around Keith’s shoulders in comfort as they swam down the main street, Pidge silently leading the way.

No one said anything else until Pidge turned around to face the boys in front of a building that appeared to be crafted out a beautiful milky crystal, sharp edges that reflected the light in a way that almost hurt to look at. “I’d like you all to meet my friend, Ryner.”

They pushed past the seaweed hanging in the doorway and entered a deceivingly spacious room that seemed to be set up as a small shop. “Pidge! Oh, it’s been too long, dear,” a woman Keith presumed was Ryner said, coming out from behind a small counter and wrapping Pidge up in her thin arms. She had a muted green tail, she wore a light brown shawl and a beautiful wooden circlet sitting atop her grey hair.

Around the small shop were wooden carvings set in crystal bases, which Keith assumed was so they would stay grounded under the water. Each one was breathtaking. Keith couldn’t help his searching fingers from brushing the side of one carving of a ballerina balancing on one leg.

In fact, as he looked around, a majority of the carvings were of humans. Humans doing regular human things that Keith would never be able to do again. His heart ached in his chest with such an acute sharpness it almost brought tears to his eyes.

And Keith heard none of the conversation held between Ryner and Pidge until Hunk was grabbing his arm and tugging him through a small door behind the counter, following the two girls. “You doing okay, man?” Hunk asked in a hushed voice as they emerged in a kitchen, where Ryner started to put on a pot of tea. Well, it probably wasn’t tea, but it was most likely as close as a mermaid could get to it.

Keith didn’t respond to Hunk’s question as he slid into a chair at the small table in Ryner’s kitchen, looking around at everything in her home. Sitting down at the table, Ryner poured tea for everyone with a smile. “I’m so glad you could stop by, but I believe you haven’t introduced your new friend yet, right?”

It took a shoulder bump from Hunk to get Keith to stop ogling the odd glass-like structure over her cupboards and actually respond to her question. “I’m Keith.”

Pidge let out a sigh at the basic response and continued for him, “He only joined the ocean this morning. I thought a tour of Atlantia was in order, huh?”

With a smile, Ryner agreed, commending Keith on being so brave as to travel with “these two hooligans.” To which Pidge let out a dramatic gasp and gently shoved Ryner, defending herself with a huff. But Keith had to take a step back, letting his mind wander to what really had happened this morning. Because, truly, everything was hitting him like a freight train.

He had only become a mermaid this fucking morning. Yesterday he was on the beach, sand in between his toes, soaking in the sun that hadn’t traveled through fathoms of water. And now he was drinking the ocean’s equivalent to tea in some random woman’s kitchen with two complete and utter strangers who had brought him here. What the actual fuck was he doing?

Getting up suddenly, he pushed himself away from the table, emotions bombarded him from every angle, too many to even count as the three mermaid’s eyes were on him, questions of concern dropping from their lips that fell through the water and never reached Keith’s ears. He rushed out of the kitchen, swimming through the small door and catapulting himself out of the shop.

Confusion and anger thrummed in his veins as the weight of what truly had happened to him crushed down on him. He would never see his brother again. He would never go to his dream school. He would never see the stars, the moon, the blue sky ever again.

Swimming blindly down the street, all Keith wanted was to get out of the water. He wanted to feel pure sunlight on his skin and the way air tastes and smell the salt on the sea breeze and hear gulls crying. But first, he would have to find his way out of the damn city.

But, obviously, because the universe was so fucking against him, as he was swimming about frantically trying to find the exit, he slammed himself into a poor mermaid with pretty pink hair and a yellow tail. “Are you quite alright?” the girl asked in a soft, even voice.

“I’m fine. Sorry for, uh, running into you,” Keith responded succinctly, turning around in a full circle, attempting to catch his bearings and having absolutely no luck while the mermaid stared at him with wide, dark eyes.

Her smile was bright as she nodded, “It’s quite alright. Everything is safe and warm here.”

Nodding slowly and trying not to show her how weirded out he was, Keith turned and realized he was a short distance away from the palace. Which, in turn, meant the road to the exit of the city was somewhere close by. So he chose a direction and started swimming, circling around the massive palace in an attempt to find the huge road that lead all the way from the entrance to the palace.

But as soon as he started swimming, the strange mermaid caught up to him in the blink of an eye and stopped him in his tracks. “Do you need guidance, young one?” Her tone was so incredibly disconnected from the concerned face she was trying to put on it only sent chills down Keith’s spine.

“I’m, uh, yeah, just trying to find my way out of here,” he admitted without really wanting to phrase it that way, but he couldn't seem to help the brutal truth from slipping through his teeth.

The look the mermaid got in her eyes was crazed, to say the least. Her pupils seemed to narrow, like a snake, and her eyebrows furrowed intensity as her mouth drew down into a harsh frown, the glimmering of pearlescent teeth showing through her lips. As soon as The expression was there, the next moment it wasn't. “But why? Everything is safe and warm, here.”

Yeah, Keith was starting to understand why Pidge didn't really like the city. And that, of course, brought him back to the entire reason he wanted to leave alone in the first place. He didn't trust Pidge or Hunk at all. Why? Because he'd met them this morning, moments after being thrust into the water with a fresh set of gills and a damn fish tail.

But, staring at this mermaid in the back courtyard of the palace, Keith certainly felt a lot safer with those two strangers. Time to backtrack. “Oh, uh, yeah not out of the city, just out of this part of the city, you see. I can’t seem to find my way back to my, uh, friend’s house.”

Her smile was really starting to wear on Keith’s nerves and was sending all sorts of warning signals throughout his tense body. “I can show you the way, if you’d like me to. I know where everyone lives in the beautiful city of Atlantia.”

How was Keith to explain that he didn’t really want her help when he was going to aimlessly wander around the palace for the next twenty minutes without her help? But, on the other hand, he had a really bad feeling about this mermaid and he definitely didn’t want to give the name of someone who could potentially pay dearly for him getting lost.

She was staring straight into his soul. Her eyes were dark orbs, no iris or white part at all, and they were looking right through him. There was nothing else he could do but blurt out the first name that came to mind and pray he passed by someplace familiar or somehow lose the weird girl along the way. That was, of course, he managed to think of a name that actually belonged to someone living in the city.

“Ariel! Yep, my friend, my _mermaid_ friend named Ariel.”

Keith was literally going to shit himself. What on earth was he thinking? Obviously that was the first name he thought of, but seriously? He was such a fucking idiot.

But, the movie had only come out a few years ago, and this weird mermaid girl had obviously been under the sea for far longer than that, so he was most likely in the clear, but still. But still.

She smiled and nodded. “Ariella, I assume? She lives in sector four, which is right this way.” The mermaid starting swimming the opposite direction he’d attempted to go a few minutes prior, making sure he wasn’t too far behind her every so often. “I am Florona, by the way.”

Keith thanked the ancients that Disney had bestowed him with enough skills to survive under the water, which he thought about with a shake of his head as he followed the girl. “Keith,” he responded immediately, mentally kicking himself for letting his guard down.

Noticing Florona beginning to steadily swim on a diagonal upward, Keith looked around for what they were heading toward. But, it wasn’t something they were swimming to, it was something they were swimming above.

Beneath them was a beautiful garden; hypnotic lights pouring out of the gently traversing ridges and valleys dancing on the white sand around it. The coral that it seemed to be made out of was different from the dome that surrounded the city. It almost looked like it shifted, dancing in the refractions of the water, breathing as the lights calmly traversed from bend to bend of the garden.

“The Baku Garden sustains us. It provides us with the warmth and nutrition that the city needs to thrive. It is the life giver of the mermaid population.”

Keith tried to hide his skepticism but, whether or not he succeeded in _not seeming_ creeped out, Florona didn’t notice. They continued over the top of the garden as Keith tore his eyes away from the hypnotizing colors that swirling and danced beneath him, focusing on his breathing as he followed the girl into another section of the city that he hadn’t visited yet (although he wasn’t quite sure what parts he _had_ been to).

Swimming past the first few buildings kicked up Keith’s thoughts, stirring about his anxieties and making him question his own ability at working around difficult situations. It had been a rough day already, and now some strange--really strange--mermaid was leading him to some random person’s house because he’d watched The Little Mermaid one too many times in the past few years.

Well, more than the Disney addiction, he was in this predicament because he had freaked and stormed out of Ryner’s house. If he hadn’t been stupid, he probably never would have swam into Florona, or anywhere near the palace for that matter! It was dumb, and now he was going to have pray that this Ariella was as nice as the one in the movie he adored.

As he ripped himself out of his thought spiral, Keith noticed that the buildings were getting gradually more and more decrepit. It seemed like the paint was chipping off the side of a several and they even passed a house with seaweed binding the door closed and a block of coral in front of a smashed window. He felt a chill walk up his spine.

Leading the way, Florona stopped in front of a tiny door three stories up, trending water to stay afloat, one small window with a kelp curtain blocking out the light. “Let us see if Ariella is home to receive you.”

“Oh, uh, I got it from here, Florona,” Keith attempted, wanting the mermaid gone so he could explain to the poor Ariella what the hell was going on. But as he watched her blank expression remain unchanging. As she blinked several times and her dark eyes stared him down, Keith realized that there was no way around it.

So he knocked.

Keith was truly expecting the worst. Maybe Ariella’s brother or boyfriend would open the door and have huge muscles and punch all his teeth out or maybe Ariella herself would punch his teeth out or maybe Ariella would have shark teeth and she would rip his throat out with her teeth while Florona laughed or maybe Ariella wouldn’t be home at all and Keith would be trapped outsider her house with Florona.

But worst of all, he was expecting the door to open, a small conversation to ensue, maybe some yelling, and then Ariella would slam the door in his face, leaving him stranded with nothing but a lie and a creepy girl.

So when the door opened, Keith did everything he could to not squeeze his eyes shut in pure fear. Standing there, in the doorway of the tiny apartment on the other side of the city from the last time he saw her, was Pidge. Keith just blinked a few times, his mouth dropping open as he furrowed his brows.

“Keith, you idiot, I told you not to explore or you would get yourself lost,” Pidge reprimanded sternly, hands on her hips and fires blazing in her eyes of all she wished to say. “Florona, darling, I can’t thank you enough for returning him to me. Do you want to come in? Ariella and I were just catching up!” The way Pidge’s tone completely changed honestly scared Keith a little bit. Pidge was definitely not someone to fuck with.

Politely declining, Florona swam away as Keith entered the small house timidly, Pidge all but slamming the door behind him. Pidge grabbed Keith’s shoulders and shook him back and forth harshly; in a panicked whisper yell, “What the shell, guppy?!”

Keith got out half of a broken word before Pidge barrelled on through his attempted response. “I get that you totally freaked out--it happens--but Florona? Florona is Queen Luxia’s handmaiden, you stupid freshwater yellowbelly!”

Wide eyed, Keith opened his mouth to explain, but ended up just casting his gaze toward the ground and mumbling a half-hearted apology, trying desperately not to let his feelings overwhelm him.

Pidge let out a groan and collapsed in a chair across the table from whom Keith assumed was Ariella, dread settling in the pit of his stomach like a stone. “I’m sorry, so sorry,” Keith whispered, folding in on himself and tucking his tail against his chest as he sank to the floor, pressing his back to the wall.

“Hey, it’s okay, guppy. I only joined the ocean two years ago, and regardless of that, every mermaid understands what the first few days of living under the water is like. I’m just glad Pidge made it here on time to let me know you were coming,” Ariella told him kindly with a warm smile and sympathetic eyes.

Swallowing back his emotions, Keith turned to Pidge with a confused look on his features. “But, how did you find me?”

“Just because I hate this damn city doesn't mean I don’t have the map memorized and allies on every street corner. Don’t underestimate me, guppy,” her voice was low and utterly horrifying as her harsh brown eyes stared him down, the complete opposite to Ariella’s compassionate ones. It only reiterated in Keith’s mind that Pidge was definitely not someone to fuck with.

When Ariella asked Keith why he told Florona that he was looking for her, Keith awkwardly scratched the back of his head and bashfully told her that “Ariel” was the first name that came to mind, mentioning that he had heard it in a movie or something. He was glad she didn’t press for more, but he continued to shower her with apologies of getting her involved in something that she had no part whatsoever in.

Pidge bid Ariella goodbye and promised she was drop by the next time she found herself in Atlantia with a warm smile. As they began to swim away, Pidge let out a sigh and ran a hand through her hair, readjusting her glasses and turning to look at Keith. “You really know how to get yourself in trouble, don’t you?”

Taking a deep breath, Keith bit his lip and looked down at his hands.

Pidge continued in a hushed voice, “I didn’t want to get too much into it at Ariella’s house, but goddamn this city is messed up. I told Hunk we’d meet him outside the walls, so that’s where we’re headed, okay?”

Keith nodded, ashamed. “I’m sorry I flipped out at you guys, I just got overwhelmed and then suddenly, I was super lost and then, well, Florona found me and things just went downhill. But that Baku Garden sure is pretty to look at, huh?” Keith mentioned with a sort of airy tone to his voice, his eyes going slightly unfocused as he remembered the way the colors seemed to dance in the water.

“Oh, okay, guppy. We’re getting you out of this joint sooner rather than later,” Pidge mumbled, rolling her eyes and swimming just a bit faster, making Keith work to keep up with her.

They wound through varieties of small streets and above what seemed to be parks, dodging other mermaids and steering clear of busy buildings. At one point, Pidge came to a sudden stop, grabbing some random mermaid’s hand as she attempted to slip between two houses. “Plaxum! Tell Ryner I’ll see her again next weekend, alright? Thanks so much, darling, good to see you!”

The blue-haired girl nodded succinctly and continued on her way; Pidge instantly began swimming again. It was a whirlwind and Keith simply could not keep up. The two blew past the guards with a flimsy hand motion by the over-five-hundred-year-old mermaid he was struggling to keep up with.

And then they were out of the city. Keith suddenly realized how dim and dreary the whole thing actually was, in comparison to the color of life that existed just moments away from the entrance to the city, a coral reef bursting with anemone and fish and snails and crabs and countless other creatures Keith had no idea existed.

Pidge looked behind them several times until she could no longer see the guards posted outside the gates, letting out a deep breath and running her fingers through her hair. “By Atargatis I hate that place,” she groaned, rubbing at her eyes from behind her glasses. “And I can’t say a word about it within the walls because Luxia would have my head. She’s a bitch by the way, don’t get involved with her. And Florona! Fucking hell, Florona is such a creep, like she needs to be on some kind of medication we do not have down here.”

All Keith could do was laugh. It was a bubble of pure relief and utter joy at being out of the city, and he fully understood why Pidge hated the place so much. Once the first chuckle had passed his lips, he couldn’t prevent the rest from tumbling out, gaining an odd look from Pidge who simply raised her eyebrows and cracked a small smile.

Once Keith contained himself, they continued at a slower pace to meet up with Hunk at what the two nerds called The Treehouse. Keith was going to ask as soon as it had come out of Pidge’s mouth, but decided on keeping his questions to himself until they got there.

And it did not disappoint.

Pidge lead Keith through a maze-like coral reef, almost getting shocked by a mean jellyfish who was angrily awakened by Keith’s “obnoxious swimming.” Pushing aside an unassuming patch of green algae, Pidge revealed a small, roundish hole in the coral. She, undaunted, propelled herself through the hole, a short tunnel devoid of light greeting Keith as he followed her.

They emerged in a large, nearly spherical room inside the reef, sunlight filtering through intricately interlocked coral above them, dappling the floor with warmth. Pidge let the algae carpet fall back in place where she had picked up to allow access through the tunnel.

“Welcome to the living room of The Treehouse,” Pidge announced with a proud smile. “We stitched together some sections of algae and made a nice carpet here and we got some jellyfish art from the city.” She gestured to a small, kelp canvas with purple and reddish splotches (it wasn’t Keith’s favorite work of art, but he had nothing to compare it to under the sea).

Keith turned around a few times in the space, trying to take everything in. Even compared to Ariella’s house, this felt so warm and homely, it was incredible. “This is amazing, Pidge,” Keith breathed, eyes bright and wide.

“And it’s only the beginning!” She was clearly excited as she catapulted herself through a rectangular cut-out in the wall, air bubbles from the force of her tail in her wake. Keith couldn’t even begin to imagine what was through the next doorway.

But when his head popped above the water, he nearly choked. Pidge and Hunk were lounging on the rock beside the water, sunlight streaming in through a hole above them. It took a moment for Keith’s brain to understand that he still had lungs to utilize breathing air, his gills flapping uselessly against him neck.

“Holy shit.”

Pidge and Hunk just laughed. It was indescribably breathtaking (literally and figuratively) to be in a large cavern and to be breathing fresh, salty air while treading water in the small pool of the cave. Rocks jutted from the ceiling, but there seemed to be colorful seaweed hung like streamers, and some sort of soft-looking algae bed that the two mermaids were stretched out on. And he was breathing air.

Pulling himself out of the water, Keith couldn’t keep himself from gazing about the cavern with wide eyes several more times, still amazed. “How did you guys find this place?”

“I’ve been around a long time, guppy. You think I came up with the dumb name The Treehouse?” She barked out a laugh. “Hell no, this cavern used to belong to someone I knew about a hundred years ago. When she left us, I moved in,” Pidge explained, picking at her nails to avoid showing her true emotions about this someone she knew.

Hunk just let out a laugh, “I’d be dead if it weren’t for Pidge, so I’ve stuck close to her for the past seventy or so years I’ve been down here.”

With a nod, Keith pulled his tail against his chest and linked his fingers, resting his chin on his scales as he looked around a few more times, still taking in the marvels of the cavern. “So I guess mermaids don’t grow their legs back when they’re dry, huh?”

“What dumbass gave you that idea?” Pidge choked out with an incredulous half-smile and raised eyebrows.

“Oh, I’ve actually heard of that one!” Hunk responded in turn, wagging a finger at Pidge and delving into a far more detailed explanation of the theory than Keith could have ever produced, even though he was the one to bring it up in the first place.

Even as Pidge shot down the stupid idea of growing legs, Keith couldn’t keep his curiosity down his throat. “But then how do you become human again?”

A heavy feeling settled in the steady sea air of the cavern, the faint lapping of the water echoing excruciatingly loud. Pidge opened her mouth, pain obvious in her eyes as Hunk just fiddled with some shell he had picked up, avoiding the gazes of both Keith and Pidge.

“You haven’t even been here a day, how can you be sure you want to leave?” Her voice was astonishingly small.

And it took Keith a moment to wrap his head around what the mermaid was saying. Was she just too fucking old to remember what it was like to be human? The joys of being human? And did she really get her feelings hurt by Keith’s damn curiosity to find out how he could ever see his own fucking brother ever again? Was she really that selfish?

But he knew, deep down, that the way she had retreated within herself, the way her voice had wavered slightly in the dead silence of the cavern, that the poor girl was just lonely. And that wasn’t his damn problem.

What ended up coming out rather snappier than he’d expected was a harsh, “Pidge, I left so much behind. I have no clue what my family must be thinking right now! If there’s any chance I could get that back, I need to know.”

“I realize you had a little freak out, today, Keith, but after all that I did to make sure you were alright, you still want to leave me?” Pidge snapped back, flames in her eyes as tears ran down her face, free to fall in the open air of the cavern.

Letting out a small, sad noise, Hunk sent a glance to Pidge before lifting his eyes to Keith. Hunk felt the same way, even though he was excluded from the mermaid’s statement.

Even with their eyes bearing all their emotions to Keith, he could only hear his own voice, squashing any sort of empathy he held within him before. They were trying to keep him down here any way possible. Wasn’t that what all the folklore about sirens were about? The gorgeous, twisted creatures would sing to sailors and cause them to crash their boats, trapped in visions of spending the rest of their life with the beautiful monster.

And that’s exactly what was happening here. Keith didn’t care that these two had been nice to him, he didn’t care that they had gone out of their way to save his ass. It wasn’t his problem that they were lonely and wanted fresh blood to prey on. Their eyes could beg him all they wanted. He had to know how to get his life back.

“You know damn well this doesn’t have a single thing to do with you! I came to this fucking beach for spring break with my brother--who just got back from serving in the navy, by the way! And then I make one goddamn mistake, learn one too many secrets, and suddenly I’m drowning!” Keith seethed, his words far too loud, his anger far too palpable, his eyes far too crazed. “So! If there’s a way I can get my fucking legs back, I’d really like to know.”

In the weightly quiet that followed, all Keith could hear was Pidge’s drawn out sigh. She folded her arms across her chest and looked away as she mumbled, “Lesson number two: if a human falls in love with you, you can trap that in a silver vessel and that love will set you free.”

“If a human _falls in love_ . . . ?”

“But, when you trap their love for you in the vessel, it will turn them into a mermaid, condemning them to this horrible life you’ve been living.”

Keith’s mouth dropped open. Could he do something like that? Could he make someone love him just so he could betray them? He clenched his hands into fists. It wasn’t like the same thing hadn’t happened to him, right?

He had tried throughout the day not to think about him too much. He tried not to dwell on the moments they had shared. He tried not to wonder where on earth he had gone. But it all made sense now. It all made sense. He had fallen in love with someone who only wanted to use him. And Keith had paid the price.

The only question was if that pain would be enough to drive him to do it to someone else.


	2. Longing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance has been trying to show off his new surfing skills to his friends while they're at the beach for summer break. Unfortunately for Lance, his skills are less than satisfactory.

The sunlight filtered through a lacework of white clouds high above Lance, leaving a dappled maze on the sand. Stretching his arms over his head, he let out a groan before sliding his sunglasses back on and leaving the safety of his towel under the umbrella. Not sparing another second, Lance bolted into the water with his surfboard clutched tight in both hands, his ankle cuff tugging slightly as he continued into the ocean.

Swinging himself up to sit atop the board, Lance paddled out to where Nyma, Rolo, and Allura were letting the gentle waves rock them back and forth. “Allura! Wanna go out further and actually catch some waves with me?” Lance asked, smile beaming.

And off they went in search of waves that would suit their needs. Lance had only learned how to surf this summer and wanted to make sure he could actually show his skills off to someone. If that someone happened to be a very pretty girl, well, there’s no harm in that.

Lance’s parents had gotten a beach house when he was only ten years old. He hardly remembered a summer when he wasn’t at the beach, so it was a little crazy that it took so long for him to actually learn how to surf. Now, he had to make the most of it.

So, out they went, letting the glimmering saltwater dance through their cool fingers as they pushed themselves further and further out into the ocean. “Allura! Look here’s comes a great wave!” Lance shouted, turning himself around on his board to face toward the shore with a wide smile on his face as Allura looked back at him with bright eyes.

Seeing the wave charging at them, Lance and Allura began to paddled toward the shoreline, putting themselves into awkward positions in order to stand up when the wave was big enough. Lance tentatively stood up, his legs bent and his arms out to the side in an attempt to stay balanced. The wave took them both, carrying them toward the shore as they tried their hardest to stay on their board while still maintaining control.

Of course, as soon as Lance really started to think he was getting the hang of it, he felt a harsh pull of the water, and his legs slid one way as he body tipped toward the other. Cascading into the water, the side of his torso slapped against the water with a crash that he was sure everyone could hear, as his ankle cuff tightened, pulling him toward the surface as he felt the wave crash over him.

Scrambling to swim upwards, Lance finally broke the surface, gasping for air as his eyes burned with saltwater. He threw himself over his board and heaved in great big breaths, pushing his hair to the side because he knew it looked disgusting plastered to his forehead as water dripped down his face.

His friends laughed at him as they asked if he was alright. Shamefully treading over to them, he pouted and resigned to spending the rest of the afternoon without attempting to surf again (especially considering how well Allura had done).

But, when Nyma, Rolo, and Allura decide to head back to the house to grab showers before dinner, Lance decides he’s going to “catch some R&R” on the beach with the sunset. But really, his friends were only staying at the beach for another six days, and he wanted to impress at least Allura with his soon-to-be incredible surfing skills.

With the sun hanging low in the sky, Lance paddled his way out into the sea, the waves cresting gently under his board. Waiting a little while, Lance finally noticed a wave nice enough to attempt surfing. Finally standing on his board when he had enough momentum and the pulse of the ocean on his side, Lance felt like he was getting the hang of it. 

When he made it a nearly back to shore, he let out a girlish cheer and couldn’t wipe the smile off his face as he immediately began paddling back out to sea. It was exhilarating, to say the least, to feel like he was a part of the ocean, able to tame something so wild--well at least master one tiny portion of it. 

He watched the sun set, color saturating the horizon as he waited for another decent wave. As soon as he spotted another one, he took a deep breath, preparing himself to nail this one once again. Standing up, Lance instantly knew it wasn’t going to end well as the board seemed to jaggedly bounce over the water, throwing off his balance.

And into the water he plummeted, slamming down as the wave rolled above him. But, his board was caught up in the madness of the churning water, staying afloat in front of the wave, dragging Lance forward as he heavy body sank toward the scattered sands. He opened his eyes underwater, feeling the salt sting his corneas as he flailed about, his ankle screaming as his cuff bit into his skin.

Yet, worse than the pinching of the cuff was the feeling of his leg ramming into a rock as his board dragged him through the water. And then it wasn’t. His ankle felt weirdly exposed as the realization dawned upon him. He’d lost his board.

And that’s when he took in a whole mouthful of saltwater in a gasp.

Frantically, Lance tried to find ground anywhere, his toes stretching out uncomfortably far, his fingers stretching out painfully as his lungs screamed, his eyes burned, and he failed to find a hold on anything. Against his will, he took in another breath of water. He felt his body convulse. Flailing about in the water only aided his sinking.

Darkness was beginning to dance on the edges of Lance’s vision as he scraped for anything he could find around him. Numbing, he noticed the cold starting to prick the tips of his fingers as his motions slowly became less erratic. He could feel the way the water was weighing him down from the inside out. His conscious fled as he finally allowed his leaden body to drift toward the bottom of the sea.

Distantly, he imagined a pair of strong arms lifting him from the depths. But the shadows had already eaten away at his mind and he allowed himself to float in a place too far away to be safe.

~ ~ ~

“Lesson number six,” Keith repeated from nearly a year ago, quoting Pidge. “Don’t ever get involved with anything that has legs.” Crabs were nasty as hell, turtles were egocentric assholes, and starfish gossip like there’s no tomorrow. Humans, well, they were self-explanatory.

He knew it was technically dangerous, but what was he supposed to do? The poor boy was drowning, and rather stupidly, if he was being honest. A surfing accident? No one wants to die with that on their tombstone unless they were literally eaten by a shark--that’s pretty badass. Regardless, Keith couldn’t just watch the boy die right in front of his eyes.

And it obviously didn’t matter that the boy was adorable nor it matter that Keith had been secretly watching the him surf all day. It especially wasn’t because he’d been scoping out humans, trying to figure out whether or not a chance for his human life was worth throwing his morals out the window.

In some awful, cruel, and sadistic way, it almost felt like it was supposed to happen.

So, he swam over to him once he was quite sure there was no way the boy was getting out of this by himself alive. Wrapping him up in his arms, Keith shoved their heads above water, and quickly swam over to a small inlet.

Even with the boy’s head above water, he wasn’t breathing, which wasn’t a great sign, but Keith just gritted his teeth and swam faster. Laying him down on the sand, he pulled himself onto the shore and flopped around a little bit before he got in an adequate position to check the boy’s pulse.

Fluttering and weak, but there. Now, Keith wasn’t exactly sure what he was supposed to do, and his thoughts were going a mile a minute trying to grab at any sort of resuscitation information he had stored in the back of his head. Only one thing was coming to mind.

Taking a deep breath, Keith lifted up the boy’s chin to open up his airway and squeezed his nose shut. His skin was cold and clammy to the touch and a there was a bluish tint to his skin. Pressing his lips firmly against his, Keith blew a fast stream of air into his mouth. Releasing the nose for a moment, Keith repeated himself, desperation beginning to blossom in his chest. He couldn’t let this boy die. He couldn’t.

It took seven breaths. Seven exhalations in an attempt to revive him. Seven sloppy kisses (if you dared to call it that) filled with the will to live. Seven intense moments of hope.

And then the boy coughed recycled seawater into Keith’s mouth. 

He couldn’t have been more disgusted. It was vile, but Keith didn’t have time to care as he just wiped his tongue on his hand a few times before turning his attention back to the boy. Vomit spurted out of his mouth as water leaked from his nose and tears from his eyes, his frail body convulsing on the sand. The boy’s eyes squinted open and his coughing pulled him almost upright, so Keith laid a gentle hand on his back to keep him sitting up. 

“You’re going to be fine,” Keith found himself saying as he rubbed a gentle circle on the boy’s cold back. As tears rolled down the boy’s face, his red-rimmed eyes pierced into him, a blue like the twilight sky striking him.

He coughed up more water and vomited some stomach bile along with that, his slender frame wracked with shivers as he clutched his stomach, breathing heavily. “Am I dead?” He asked in a hoarse whimper, tears tracked down his face as he turned to drag his eyes up Keith’s tail before searching across his face and staring at the fish-like fins attached where his ears used to be.

“No?” Keith responded, unsure of what to say, suppressing memories of a time he wanted to forget. Because obviously, the poor boy wasn’t dead--he’d just saved his life--but how was he supposed to explain that mermaids did actually exist? It was a lot for a very recently resuscitated person to be taking in.

The boy’s eyes wandered, almost unseeing, as his head wobbled on his unsteady neck, his fingers digging into the sand beside him. With a look of concern, Keith placed a hand to the back of the boy’s neck and tried to get him to stop moving his eyes so much by staring at him (not the best method, but hey, he was under a lot of stress). He was probably already dizzy, and his near-frantic motions weren’t helping.

“I’m Keith,” he stated simply, batting his eyelashes impatiently at the boy, trying to get his twilight eyes to focus on him.

Blinking several times, the boy attempted to respond, but his mouth only brought forth a hacking cough as he doubled in on himself. Keith didn’t even think about it before he had the boy’s head tucked under his chin, pulling his shoulders against Keith’s chest and holding him tight. “It’s going to be fine. Everything is going to be alright,” he whispered, rocking the poor thing back and forth gently, waiting for the coughing fit to pass.

As he lay in his arms, the boy’s breathing slowly fell back into a natural rhythm. Keith felt the boy go heavy with sleep in his arms as his coughing subsided. With careful fingers, he laid the boy back down in the sand, drawing a cold finger over his cheek and brushing off some sand clinging to his hair. 

In the moonlight, the boy’s softer features were highlighted. He was breathtaking, Keith had to admit. High, sloping cheekbones, long eyelashes falling on tanned skin, and a spray of freckles dusted his heart-shaped face. 

Taking one final glimpse of him, Keith dove back into the water, the cool wash of the ocean not nearly enough to wipe the flush from his cheeks.

~ ~ ~

“Lance! Lance, holy fuck. Guys!”

The voice was high-pitched and panicked as the light began to seep past Lance’s eyelids, no matter how he scrunched them tightly together. More yelling and more expletives erupted around him before cool, slender fingers pushed harshly into the side of his neck.

When a groan of protest attempted to blossom in his throat, it sent shockwaves of pain through his body, as if awakening his senses to the harsh realities of the world. “Oh thank the lord jesus in heaven,” someone mumbled above him. His throat was dry and raw, throbbing, and every breath his took only made more pain ricochet about in his lungs.

There was more discussing above him as he allowed his head to loll to the side, not having enough strength yet to force his head up. And then arms were slotting beneath his knees and his neck and gently picking him up from the sand. As he felt the weight of those arms under him, fractured, unbelievable memories started driving into him from every angle.

It must not have been real, it couldn’t have been real. But, still, he opened his eyes, halfway wanting to see bone-white skin and black hair, accompanied by finned ear-like things. And, of course, the bright red tail curling delicately in the sand.

But, instead he saw Rolo’s panicked face as he hurried down the beach, Lance bouncing in his arms, the two girls trotting along beside him, concern in their features. Allura is the first to notice Lance’s eyes squinting open because she instantly let out a frantic gasp. 

“Lance! Lance, are you alright? What happened?” Her voice was squeaky.

He opened his mouth to respond, but it was like opening a really old chest that used to belong to your grandpa and it smells like dust and mothballs. Nothing but a coughing fit resulted of him trying to speak, and he could feel Rolo’s arms tighten in their hold and his pace pick up slightly.

From his other side, Nyma patted his hair gently and shh’d him as she would a child. Lance was pretty confident he could walk, but it wasn’t like he could tell Rolo that. He could hear his own raggedy breathing anyway, there was no way they would allow him out of his arms anyway. But being carried bridal style was still kind of embarrassing, even though he did almost die the night before.

And back came the vivid images of the mermaid who had saved his life. There was simply no other explanation to what happened. He’d fallen off his board and gotten panicked as his ankle cuff dragged him through the undercurrent before abandoning him to his own doom. But, before he had the chance to actually die, a mermaid had lifted him from the depths and saved his life.

_A fucking mermaid had saved his life._

Yeah, so Lance officially had a pretty cool life (not that anyone would believe him, though).

Before he could mull too much on the idea of harboring this secret within himself for all of eternity, Lance felt Rolo slowing to a stop, causing him to open his eyes and remind himself of where he actually was. Being that he had no idea where he had ended up passing out last night, there wasn’t much hope for determining location as Rolo gently placed him on the ground in front of one of the 50 or so lifeguard stands that lined the beaches.

And immediately there were hands all over him. Someone was checking his pulse on both his neck and his wrist, someone had their ear pressed against his bare chest, their hair tickling his sunburnt skin. It was probably only two people, but it certainly felt like he was being attacked by a mob of people all wanting to make sure he was okay. Someone asked him to stick his tongue out as a tongue-depressor left a woody taste in his mouth.

“Hi, Lance? Can you tell us what happened?” A tan, bleached-blonde girl asked with wide brown eyes. He would have thought of something witty to say back, but he wasn’t quite able to dig something up in his state.

There was an icepack placed on his forehead and he couldn’t help the small groan that slide through his lips as he relaxed into the sand beneath him. “Uh,” he tried, his voice raggedly and quiet. “I was surfing,” he managed, taking a long breath to steady himself. “And I wiped out particularly bad, so my board got caught on the wave--” a quick break for a disgusting cough “--so my board was pulling me forward, and I got caught in the undercurrent of the wave when my ankle cuff slipped off.”

The bleached-blonde was nodding and writing some things down on a clipboard while the brunette dude with an undercut examined his fingers and toes for what Lance imagined to be hypothermia. “I, uh, I don’t really remember what else happened but I guess I made it shore, right?” His words got a little cut off from a cough that shook his whole body.

“Alright, thank you, Lance. You’re pretty lucky, you know that, right? You could have easily died out there. It’s a good thing you have such great friends. Be safe.” And then, to Rolo, Nyma, and Allura, quieter, as if Lance was some invalid, “He doesn’t need to be hospitalized, but some rest and lots of water, herbal teas. No citrus or milk. If his throat is still hurting pretty bad after three days, take him to the clinic and have them make sure there weren’t any abrasions or cuts.”

Lance let his eyes close, but the sun was still painfully bright on the other side of his eyelids. He couldn’t remember a time when he hated the sun so much as in those moments. A lot of things ached throughout his body, probably from thrashing about in the water and spending the whole night uncomfortably on the unforgiving sand.

And then his friends were helping him stumble to his feet; Rolo slung Lance’s arm over his shoulder and helped him across the sand slowly. “Hey, I’ve got it by myself,” Lance told them, his voice scratchy and painful.

Ignoring him completely, Allura put a soft hand on his shoulder, “We’re just so glad you’re okay, Lance.” She almost sounded choked up, which couldn’t have been the case, right? The doubt in his mind wasn’t enough to stop the butterflies from invading his stomach.

Sure, he had a thing for Allura, but it wasn’t like he was going to go drown again just to get some attention. But, he wasn’t against acting a little more helpless than he actually was if it was going to score him some points with the pretty lady. And, he did feel like shit, so he wouldn’t be doing too much acting anyway.

After what seemed like years of walking, they finally made it back to Lance’s beach house, where his mother nearly tackled him out of Rolo’s hold, her hands all over his face as she exclaimed how worried she was among other motherly things. It was all in rushed and panicked spanish, and Lance was glad for once that his friends couldn’t understand what she was saying.

Lance grimaced as she squeezed the life out of him in a tight hug, reminiscing about the one time he and his older brother Marco had decided to go rogue and become spies. So, obviously, they hid out in the neighbor’s bushes with black ski masks on and waited until dark so they could see if they could break into their own house. That only ended in them realizing the doors were still unlocked and their parents were having simultaneous conniptions while their siblings cried because mom had blamed both of them for their brothers’ disappearance.

So yeah, Lance was glad Rolo, Nyma, and Allura had no idea what she was saying.

Lance was made to eat a PB & J and drink an entire bottle of water before he was forced to go take a nap, everyone worried about their poor, frail child. Rolling his eyes, he gave his mom a quick peck on the cheek and assured everyone in a quiet, scratchy voice that he was fine.

And then he was in bed, staring at the ceiling and the way the afternoon light emerged from behind the curtains. There was only one thing on his mind. There was very little chance of him getting any sleep with the image of the mermaid who had saved his life burned deep into his corneas.

The boy had dark eyes, the color indistinguishable in the pale moonlight, but his hair was undeniably black, stuck at several odd angles to his glimmering pale skin. The ear-fins protruded to fan out on either side of his head, a translucent crimson. He almost looked like he was bleeding, the three long slits on either side of his neck, the skin expertly flayed and Lance couldn’t help but wonder how his lungs and all the human stuff worked in tandem with the mermaid stuff or if it was completely different. Maybe it was all fish anatomy in the thoracic cage, or maybe it was something special. Lance would never know.

Even as the anatomy of the goddamn mermaid swirled about in his head, he still couldn’t get the breathtaking image of the boy out of his mind. Wrapping around his arms were ribbons of crimson, complimenting the fine muscles toned under them. Scales climbed up his stomach, the red a stark contrast to the pale skin there. Matching the ribbons around his arms, a thick belt-type thing was corded around his waist. And the long tail had glistened in the moonlight, enchanting in ways that Lance couldn’t quite place.

It was odd, that this image resonated so strongly with Lance, that he could remember the graceful line of his cheekbone, and the sloping arch of his shoulder with such clarity. It probably had something to do with the fact that the mermaid had saved his life.

As he mulled over the appearance of his savior, it started to become astonishingly clear that there was no way in hell it could have been a dream. Ever since he was little, he’d never remembered any details from dreams or nightmares or anything like that. Sure, he’d remember the big ideas, but never the way the light had slipped in between the mermaid’s scales, highlighting each one as individual and utterly perfect.

If there had been any doubt in his mind that he had made it all up, it was gone now.

The only thing he could do was wait until he could sneak back to the inlet. He had to see the mermaid again.

Issue number one presented itself when, after an hour or two or youtube videos on his phone, he attempted to get a snack from the kitchen. His mother, ever the worrywort, took his temperature and nearly ripped his shirt off, trying to tell if there were any scratches that needed her attention. Flailing about, Lance tried to make her understand that he was fine, and that the nap had really helped (a lie, but whatever).

Nevertheless, she forbade him from leaving the house for at least three days, having seen the awful sunburn he’d endured from lying helplessly on the beach for a handful of hours that morning. She made him a plate of pasta and meatballs and sent him back to his room with two bottles of water to drink before he went to sleep.

Issue number two reared its ugly head when he texted Rolo the next morning to come bail him out. Apparently, with all the drama, Lance had forgotten that he and Nyma were leaving that day. They stopped by the house and gave their goodbyes, their warnings to stay safe edged in seriousness.

After dealing with that, he called Allura to try and get her to persuade Mrs. McClain to allow him to go to the beach, even if not the water. The girl blatantly refused. Outright, she said she was worried about him staying safe and that that was more important than spending her last couple of days with him.

Although, it did make Lance’s heart beat a little faster, he was upset by her refusal to help him out. He did, however, manage to convince her to hang out at his place and play board games for an afternoon (which he enjoyed far too much).

Issue number three appeared to him when, after the three mandatory days, his mom decided that it would be best if she came with him to the beach. Not to mention she didn’t let him go in the water and wasn’t allowed to take off his shirt.

So he sat, dejected, under his mom’s umbrella, his sunburnt toes peeling skin as he played around with the sand stuck under his toenails. If she wasn’t going to let him go to the beach by himself, how was he ever going to make it back to the cove and meet the mermaid again?

Issue number four came to him immediately after issue number three, when he realized that regardless of whether he managed to make it to the beach by himself or not, he didn’t have a clue as to where the inlet actually was.

He had been delirious when his friends had found him, and he didn’t have the slightest clue as to even which side of the shore he had been at. And, to make matters worse Allura had left only that morning, meaning it would take a phone call to get the answer out of her which would be the single most awkward phone call of his life.

So, that was going to be the backup plan. Plan A basically included wandering around until he found the place that felt right. Alright, so it wasn’t the best of ideas, but he was really starting to get stir-crazy just sitting underneath the umbrella.

Issue number four and a half presented itself in the form that his mom forced him to wear her wide-brimmed hat with an explosion of flowers on it before he was allowed to walk along the beach with strict instruction that he wasn’t allowed to go in the water past his knees.

Issue number five didn’t quite seem like a problem at first. After walking away from his house in the direction that he vaguely remembered being carried from, he noticed a jagged patch of stones that nearly barred the next part of beach. Surrounded by high dunes that caressed a cliff face, Lance felt a surge in his chest that this seemed like the perfect place a mermaid would drag an unconscious human to revive them in secret.

As he jumped from the rocks and examined the inlet he was standing within, a large smile blossomed across his face, his heart aflutter in his chest. Stupidly giddy, Lance proceeded to crouch down and write in the sand, with a shaky finger: I’LL MEET YOU HERE TONIGHT TO THANK YOU.

It was dumb, he had to admit. He also had no idea if the tide was going in or out, so he hoped luck was on his side and his message stayed long enough for the beautiful mermaid boy to read it. Putting both hands behind his head and twirling around in the sand, Lance’s bright smile couldn’t have been shaken off his face for anything.

But as he climbed back over the rocks to join the main beach once again, he realized that he was nearly a twenty-five minute walk from his house. That was almost an hour in travel time both ways! His mother would never condone him leaving the house for more than half an hour, especially given the extenuating circumstances.

So, his mother just couldn’t find out.

///

Seven days after his near-death experience, he was tiptoeing down his stairs and listening quietly for his mother’s snores. After a count to ten, Lance continued down, slowly and carefully creaking the door open before slipping outside into the dark night.

The air was warm and hung heavily all around him. Checking his watch, he saw that it was after midnight and the moonlight washed out everything on the street in an eerie, pale version of what it looked like in the daytime.

And he started the trek down to the cove, hope alive and burning in his chest. Balling his fists and squeezing his eyes closed, Lance sent an extremely informal prayer to whatever gods would listen. 

_Please let him be there._

He had to remind himself to breathe as he stumbled over the rocks, already nearly 12:45 in the early, early morning. What he saw when he tentatively wandered into the inlet certainly didn’t disappoint.


	3. Yearning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge and Hunk are not happy when they find out that Keith had interaction with a human, no matter the circumstances. But Keith isn't willing to let anything come between him and his opportunity at becoming human again.   
> Sometimes, the greatest enemy is oneself.

“You fucking did _what?_ ” Pidge breathed, her voice low and filled with something akin to disbelief as well as fear.

“I know, I _know_.” Keith ran his hands through his hair, ruffling it up in the water. “But what was I supposed to do? Watch him drown?” he snapped, eyes narrowed with rage.

Hunk, too, was shaking his head as he crossed his arms. “It’s not smart, Keith. Poachers got Ulaz twenty five years ago and when Thace tried to make some girl fall in love with him, he almost got killed by her boyfriend’s yacht!” Pursing his lips, Hunk swallowed harshly. “We don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

In contrast, Pidge just rolled her eyes. “I told you, what, four months ago? Don’t mess with anything that has legs! Especially two!” She crossed her arms with frustration. “You’re going to regret getting involved with him. You could bring disaster down upon _all_ of us. You realize that, don’t you, guppy?”

“Sorry!” Keith yelled back, not a hint of apology in his voice, his eyes wide with irritation. “I couldn’t just sit there and wait for him to die!” He could feel the words burning in the back of his mouth, and he knew well enough that he shouldn’t let them escape, but without much thought, he was spitting out, “And maybe I want to get involved with two-legged creatures! Maybe I want my own damn legs back!”

Drawing in a stifled gasp, Pidge turned to stare Keith down. “You’re getting in over your head.” And Pidge could tell that Keith was going to do whatever the fuck he wanted to, no matter what she said. “You’re still nineteen years old, guppy. You haven’t really been in love. How would you know the first goddamn thing when it comes to making someone fall for you?”

Hunk opened his mouth to interject, most likely hoping to lighten the mood and clear the air between the two mermaids. But Keith got his words out faster. 

“You have _no idea_ what I’ve been through, you slimey shovelnose catfish.” 

And Pidge responded in kind, slinging her own insults right back at him with bubbles erupting angrily from their gills in forced huffs of air. Hunk even got in on the action, calling Keith an “overconfident fiddler crab” and Pidge a “mean-spirited starfish with an eye for conflict”.

“I don’t want to see you get hurt, Keith!” Pidge finally yelled, frustrated tears drifting out of her eyes and getting caught in her eyelashes. “Do you know how many times I’ve seen my friends get their hopes up just for spring break to fucking end and they never saw their human again?”

Keith tried to stammer out something to defend himself but Pidge just kept talking, “And there’s been times they haven’t been able to do it. Because _they_ fell in love with the human.” She sighed, defeated and quiet, the anger draining from her voice. “It’s cruel, the way it works down here. It’s fucking cruel.”

Dropping to sit against the outcropping they had been hunting by when Keith told them the news, Pidge rubbed at her eyes from behind her glasses, pulling her tail against her chest as she mumbled into her scales. “My own damn brother left me.”

And Hunk was saddling up right next to her, draping an arm over her shoulder and pulling her close to him. “Matt was never suited for life here, but he was an asshole. I’m sorry, Pidge,” Hunk whispered into her hair, pressing a feather-light kiss onto the crown of her head and hugging her close.

Meanwhile, Keith’s head was reeling. “M-Matt?”

And there was nothing he could do to stop the onslaught of memories from a time he’d rather forget. He still remembered the first time he saw his face, just barely above the surface of the water, honey-brown hair stuck against his forehead. 

Shiro had long since decided to spend the day inside with a good book and some iced tea, so Keith had slipped into his bathing suit and coated himself with sunscreen before leisurely floating on his inner tube, letting the waves gently rock him back and forth. It wasn’t long before he had fallen asleep and floated out further than he probably should have, suddenly waking up with the shore a sliver in the distance.

Obviously, he had freaked out, losing his hat in the waves as he scrambled into a better position in the tube to make his way back to the beach. 

But he wanted his hat. His godforsaken hat. Reaching for it, he had ended up tumbling out of the inner tube, the cool water enveloping him like a dark kiss.

He had promptly started flailing about, trying desperately to tread water, but it felt like he just kept sinking, the water filling his mouth and nose and ears and eyes, his deadening fingers grasping at nothing but seafoam. 

And that was _certainly_ made better when scales had brushed up against his leg, causing him to literally jump out of his skin as he sucked in a full mouth of saltwater. He let out a positively blood-curdling scream suffocated by the ocean waves.

Next, instead of scales, he had felt the smooth plastic of his inner tube beneath his fingers and he was scrambling to catch a hold of it. Flung over the side of the float, he had gasped for air, his feet kicking gently in the water.

And cue another scream when Matt’s head poked out of the water, a fucking dopey smile plastered on his face. 

“Hey, calm down!” He had yelled back with a laugh, putting his hands up in the air in a signal of surrender. “I just got your tubey thing back and all you’re going to do is scream at me? Not even a thank you?”

“I--uh, thank you?” Keith stammered, breathless, his eyes wide and stinging from the water.

“You’re welcome!” Matt had proclaimed wildly, spinning around once, his smile too big for his face as he put his hands on top of Keith’s where they rested on the tube. “Are you doing alright? You’re awfully far from shore, huh?”

With his mouth dropped open, Keith tried to force words from his throat, but all he managed was a rather disgraceful, “What _are_ you?”

And Matt had just laughed, giving his name and flicking his tail out of the water before exclaiming, “I’m a mermaid!”

Keith had let out a concerned chuckle that quickly escalated to a manic laugh. Looking at him rather sideways, Matt bit his lip and furrowed his brow as Keith breathed, “Am I dead?”

From there, it had spiraled. Spiraled so out of control that Keith had know idea what was going on until the night he had promised Matt he would meet in their secret cove. 

The last thing he had said to Shiro had been a sarcastic, “Goodnight, you old man. Don’t forget to take your medicine! Oh, and don’t slip in the shower, okay?” with a snorted laugh when Shiro had said he was going to bed at 9:30.

And then he was slipping out of the house, not even bothering with a shirt in the warm spring night, walking down to the beach. There had been a fluttering in his chest at the prospect of seeing Matt again, and he was excited to spend time with the boy he had quickly fallen for over the past six days. There was little he could’ve done to resist his goofy charm and wit.

So down to the cove he went, stupidly messing with his hair to make sure it looked okay before seeing Matt again. Keith had climbed out to a rock not far from the shore, but deep enough for Matt to swim comfortably around him.

They had laughed in the moonlight. Free to let their joy of being together loose in the darkness that coated them, the water lapping the shore in gentle music to their blossoming love.

“Hey, you know what would be fun? You should swim with me!” Matt’s smile was too big to refuse. And Keith was already wearing a swimsuit, so what did it matter anyway, right? Gently guiding him, Matt had Keith wrap his arms around his neck and his legs around his waist, their chests pressed against one another, Keith’s face bright with blush. 

Starting slow, Matt faced upward, keeping their heads out of the water, Keith clung to him like a koala to a tree, stifling his laughter as Matt’s powerful tail pushed them further and further out into the sea. Matt’s hands were clasped and lying gently on Keith’s back, his eyes shining as they gazed at one another.

“It’s really beautiful out here, huh?” Matt had asked quietly, his eyes never moving from Keith’s, a small smile on his lips. In hindsight, Keith couldn’t believe he didn’t notice the gleam of hunger in Matt’s eyes. Hunger for something he had lost and held so close at hand. Lying through his perfect, gleaming teeth, Matt’s eyes had softened ever more as they searched Keith’s face. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

Keith’s heart had soared. Butterflies erupted in his stomach as his face flushed, quickly looking away from Matt in embarrassment. Quietly, Keith had admitted, “I think I’m falling in love with you, too.” And he had looked back to Matt, joy filling his heart, almost aching. 

But that’s when Keith suddenly noticed the pressure of Matt’s fingers digging into his back. The way Matt’s voice had changed in an instant, his eyes narrowing coldly, his devilish smile scaring Keith to the bone. “Aw. Sorry about this, then.” 

Matt had pressed their lips together firmly, pain and hunger filling the kiss as Matt took Keith’s lip between his teeth with a smile. With a mere flick of his tail, the two were spiraling under the water, Keith choking as Matt’s kiss stole his air, his humanity, his life. One hand had tangled itself in Keith’s hair while the other wrapped something tightly around his bicep.

And then Matt was gone. Keith was drowning, not even knowing which way was up as darkness overtook him, nothing but loneliness and the sting of betrayal residing deep in his heart.

Swallowing harshly and willing the memories away, Keith nodded and slowly lifted his gaze to look at Pidge again. He wrapped her up in his arms quickly, squeezing tightly for just a moment before flicking his tail and hurrying off through the dark waters to be alone with his thoughts.

He’d been with the ocean for almost a year and a half, and he had say, each day it got a little easier to cope, a little easier to bare with the pressures of being a mermaid who still felt so, so human. Yet, everyday, no matter how easy it felt to swim without thinking about his tail, or how normal it felt for his gills to tickle his skin slightly, he still wondered how long it would be until he became human again.

There was no doubt in his mind that he was supposed to get his life back. He had to; there was no other option. 

Admittedly, he had been spending more and more time near the surface, watching the humans on their surfboards, wiping out, splashing each other, relaxing in the sun.

So, when one started to appear more than the rest how was Keith supposed to ignore the opportunity to spark a relationship? And the whole drowning incident couldn’t have been more perfectly timed, plus, the boy now owed Keith his life. And he would take it from him in exchange for his humanity. Keith ignored the pain and discomfort that rolled around in his stomach at the prospect of condemning an innocent soul to the depths.

He also attempted to ignore the similarities between his relationship with Matt to the one with the boy.

At least, now he understood why Pidge was so reluctant to provide him with the proper chance to leave her (going to lengths to save him from Florona, withholding information on how to get his legs back, etc.). 

Keith had been the replacement for Matt. When he had left, Keith had taken his spot in the trio. From the look on Pidge’s face as she stared blankly out into the water, it was obvious that they had be really close.

Heart aching in his chest, Keith squeezed himself between Hunk and Pidge on the outcropping, draping his arms over each of their shoulders, pulling them close. Keith admitted with a sigh, “I’m sorry that I’m a shit friend to you guys.” Swallowing harshly, he forced himself to shower the nicest people he’d ever met with the compliments they rightfully deserved. “You guys are so much better than any friends I had on land. But, _my_ brother is up there, wondering what in the seven hells happened to me. I almost lost him once. How is it fair that as soon as I get him back, we’re ripped away from each once again?”

“I--I get it,” Pidge revealed, leaning into Keith. “I just, I guess it’s been so long since I’d given up on the idea that I’d ever go back.” Her voice was still heavy with tears as she dropped her forehead onto Keith’s shoulder, sniffling. 

Surprising Keith with tears of his own, Hunk rested his chin atop Keith’s head, wrapping his free arm around Pidge, making the three of them an ugly conglomerate of arms and tails and tears. “Just be careful, okay? If I have to lose you, I just wanna make sure it’s on your terms, alright?”

“Of course. I’ll be careful,” he promised, enjoying the warmth radiating from the other two mermaids. “Thanks, guys. You really are the best.”

///

“Careful” was thrown out the window as Keith told Hunk and Pidge he was going to find some of his favorite type of seaweed for a midnight snack but instead instantly rushed to the surface. He had to see if the boy was going to come back to him.

There was no way in hell he was going to give up the best opportunity that had ever presented itself to him by being cautious. Every night after the drowning incident, Keith made his way back to the inlet he had left the boy in, hope alit in his chest that he would be there, waiting for him.

It was almost funny. It took seven breaths for him to come back to the world, and it took seven days for him to come back to Keith.

And on that seventh day, as the moon drifted into the sky, Keith swam toward the shore. The moonlight dipped into crevices in the sand just off the water’s edge that were far too fine to be natural. With narrowed eyes, Keith approached the beach rather timidly, confusion etched into his brow.

I’LL MEET YOU HERE TONIGHT TO THANK YOU.

His heart positively soared. The boy had found the cove and knew that Keith would be here, waiting for him. Feeling his cheeks flush, Keith dipped back underwater slapping at his cheeks to gain some sense. He knew why he was doing this, and he had to stay focused on that.

Doing a few figure-8s in the water, Keith swam over to a rock that was on the far end of the inlet, resting his arms on it and keeping his eyes trained at the beach the boy would be coming from.

Keith couldn’t deny that his heart fluttered in his chest when he saw the boy struggling to climb over the rocks, his legs gangly and thin. Holding back a giggle, he covered his mouth with one slender-fingered hand, already batting his eyelashes even though the boy hadn’t even seen him yet.

But when he did, Keith’s smile slipped off his face. He watched the way the boy’s grin erupted across his face, his fingers splayed in excitement, his tan skin littered with freckles and a dusting of a blush. The boy was so undeniably happy to see him, genuinely happy, it made guilt coil up in his stomach, weighing him down like a cinder block.

Shoving his head beneath the water and taking a deep, cleansing breath, Keith reminded himself he could do this. No, he had to do this. There was no other choice, and this boy was such a perfect opportunity that he couldn’t pass up. Keith had to win this boy’s heart so he could get his life back. It was as simple as that.

~ ~ ~

Lance’s heart constricted in his chest as he saw the thin, pale arms tossed onto the rock, jet black hair a mess atop his head. Suddenly consumed by nervousness, he looked down into the sand where he slowly made his way over to his note in the sand, half watching the mermaid slice through the water. Just the tips of the fin that stretched down his spine stuck out of the water as the boy came closer to the shore.

He was mystified. Sure, he knew deep in his heart that it had been a mermaid that saved his life, but then again, he’d never seen a mermaid before that incident, and he was half-dead, so there was a lot of room for suspicion.

Yet, here he was. A beautiful mermaid swimming toward him. A _mermaid_.

Unsure of what to do, Lance took a few steps into the water, feeling the bite of the ocean in comparison to the warm summer air. Nearly five feet away from him, the mermaid poked the top of his head out of the water, his dark eyes staring at him, his hair plastered to his forehead but still somehow looking amazing.

His heart positively _melted_ when Lance got a good look at the rest of that beautiful face and finely-sculpted collarbones as he emerged from the water and a small grin overtook his lips. “Hi,” the mermaid breathed, water rolling down his cheeks as droplets formed at the tips of his hair.

“H-hi,” Lance managed to get out, his words strangled by his shortness of breath.

“It’s nice to see you again,” the mermaid revealed quietly, never taking his eyes off the blushing mess that Lance felt himself turning into. “You look good.” Lance could _feel_ those beautiful eyes scanning him up and down but the way he said it sounded like he was concerned for his health. Nonetheless, a shiver walked down his spine as he unconsciously took a few more steps into the water, the gentle waves nearly cuffing the bottom of his shorts.

Similarly, the mermaid slowly came a little closer, although he was a bit restrained by the shallow water and would very soon have his chest pressed against the bottom of the ocean. With a mischievous smile, he flicked his eyebrows up at Lance before pushing off the sand and flipping over himself, contorting so he was swimming away from Lance with his face to the stars. It was breathtaking, seeing the moonlight reflect off the crimson of the mermaid’s tail as he swam.

Losing sight of him, Lance had to hold in his gasp when he popped up from behind the rock he had been leaning on earlier. With a giggle, Lance made his way over to the outcropping, his heart light with the giddiness of meeting the person who’d saved his life.

As Lance clumsily worked his way out to the furthest rock of the grouping, the mermaid hoisted himself out of the water and sat perched on the end of the stone. Lance very narrowly avoiding falling into the water as he admired the beauty that was the creature sitting in front of him.

“I didn’t manage to get your name the last time we saw each other,” the mermaid said cooly, dragging his gaze over to Lance and tilting his head to the side.

“Lance,” he told him as he sat down on the adjacent rock, all but tiptoeing around the graceful creature. The water was cool as he let his feet dangle off the rock, both him and the mermaid staring out across the ocean, watching the way the moonlight fell on the gentle waves.

“Lance,” the mermaid murmured, as if trying the way his name felt coming out of his mouth. 

And Lance decided that he liked the way it sounded falling off his lips. He liked it more than he was ready to admit. It was probably that weird syndrome where people instantly fall for their savior, right? But as his gaze slid over to admire the beautiful boy sitting next to him, he realized with a flush that he didn’t quite mind.

Scratching the back of his head and smiling lightly, Lance admitted, “If you, uh, told me your name earlier I don’t remember it.” He let out a laugh, trying to cut through the awkward air that sizzled between them, thick enough to cut with a knife.

The mermaid laughed and it felt like ten years was lifted off Lance’s life with the carefree windchime of his laugh. “I’m Keith.”

Broken fragments of memory stabbed at the back of Lance’s eyes, of warm, strong hands cradling him tightly. He decided to ignore it and instead turn his mind back to the present, to Keith, sitting only a foot apart from him, his sloping cheekbones highlighted in the moonlight. Finally, Lance could make out the color of his eyes as his staring caught Keith’s eyes to turn toward him.

Purple.

Lance was consumed by the delicate purple of Keith’s irises and how they reflected the moonlight like gemstones, flecks of grey adding endless depth. Drowning didn’t seem all that bad as long as he would be able to stare into his eyes forever.

“Thank you!” he blurted out quickly, looking away, as soon as his thoughts caught up with his conscious. “For, uh, saving me. You really didn’t have to go out of your way or whatever . . .” That’s really not what he had been planning on saying, but his hands were shaking and his throat was closing up.

And those kind purple eyes were drawing him back in as a smile broke across his face. “What else could I have done? I wasn’t about to watch you drown,” Keith told him with a snort and a slightly disdaining tone.

Lance watched a brief moment of panic pass over Keith’s face as soon as his words has dropped out of his mouth. Sending a nervous smile, the mermaid ruffled up his hair a touch, feeling the awkwardness in how it was drying--in sections, the top of his bangs were fluffy while the lower portion still stuck to his skin.

“Ah, haha, sorry.” Keith fiddled with one of the arm bands, his tone much lighter that it was moments before. With a smile, Lance knew he still had much to learn about the boy sitting next to him before he could pass any sort of judgement on him.

“I’m really glad you did, though. Save me, I mean. Obviously,” Lance stumbled over his words, taking the awkwardness in the air and twisting it into something much more gruesome. It was hard to swallow, almost, with something weighing down between them. Neither could seem to quite place what it was.

But now it was time for Keith to blurt something out like an idiot. “Can I ask you something?”

From his nervous tone, Lance’s heart dropped, expectations of so many horrible things racing through his mind. There was no telling what could be on the other side of Keith’s question and Lance had no idea what to do in order to prepare. So he just nodded silently, forcing his eyes to marvel at the slowly rising moon.

“Has the Hubble Telescope sent back any photos yet?” His voice was eager and fucking adorable. “I saw the launch on TV and I can’t believe they’re going to be taking high resolution photos of galaxies and stars and nebulas so far away!”

Lance watched the way his lips moved, the way his eyes squinted the tiniest bit, the way his hands enunciated everything for him, excitement exuding from him. He could watch Keith for forever. Snapping back once the silence had elongated into something awkward again, Lance let out a nervous giggle. “Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not really keeping up with what’s going on up there.” 

The way Keith nodded a little sadly, his eyebrows slightly furrowed as he turned his attention to moon made Lance realize that he would do a lot to see that smile again. “But, hey! I can do some research when I get home and I’ll bring the photos with me the next time we meet, okay?” 

Lance didn’t even need to find pictures of far away galaxies or stars or nebulas. There was more hiding within Keith’s violet eyes that he could spend years marveling.

~ ~ ~

_The Hubble Space telescope, really?!_

He was a certified idiot. Truly the definition of a yellow-bellied trout with a brain the size of a pea. Keith was _supposed_ to be wooing the living shit out of this flimsy human! Making “bedroom eyes” or whatever the fuck to get this boy’s head out of the water and into his pants so he’d be more willing to, you know, give up his goddamn life for Keith’s sake.

Not that Lance needed to know any of that, of course.

But as soon as all the shit about the telescope and space and the stars and all this dumb crap that Lance didn’t even care about started to pour out of his mouth, he realized that there was no way in hell this human was going to fall for him. He made a stupid mess out of himself and no one would ever be remotely attracted to him.

And yet, Lance was looking at him with puppy-dog eyes, his deep blue irises overwhelming Keith, distracting his conscious. Then Lance started talking about how he would do research just for Keith, just so Keith could have the answers he’d been craving for over a year as he was stuck under the water, the stars so much further than ever before. 

Keith found himself staring at Lance as he shyly spoke about printing out the photos for him. Biting his lip, the mermaid tried to keep his head about him, picking at something that didn’t exist underneath his fingernail, a flush spread across his cheeks. “Yeah, I think I’d like that.” Then, with a coy smile and a raised eyebrow, “Those photos can be the first installment of your plan to pay me back.”

“Pay you back . . . ?” Lance wondered aloud, his eyebrows furrowing.

Sticking his tongue out between his smile, Keith reminded, “For saving your life, idiot.” Leaning back on his elbows, knowing that this accentuated his muscles in his chest and his arms, Keith spared a glance at Lance before sending his gaze out across the water. Was he giving out a suave vibe? He really, really hoped he was. “I had to do mouth-to-mouth, you know.”

The squeak that Lance let out instantly ruined any sort of mood Keith was trying to put in place as he jumped slightly and whipped his head around to look at the human in shock. Slapping a hand over his mouth, Lance’s eyes were wide and filled with something akin to horror.

And then Keith was doubled over, laughing. His whole body shook and it felt like his abs were going to split from laughing so hard. This dork was aghast at the mere prospect of what Keith had done to save his sorry ass (even if he did have some ulterior motives). But soon he heard the intermingling of Lance’s laughter along with his own.

“Does it really seem that bad?” Keith asked when he had finally calmed down enough to look at Lance with incredulous eyes, laughter still alight in his voice.

Lance had tears in the corners of his eyes as he gasped for air, his giggling slowly subsiding, his cheeks still pink (whether this was from embarrassment or laughter, Keith didn’t know). “I-I’m sorry, I just,” he had to pause to catch his breath, his grin still stretched wide across his face as Lance’s eyes searched Keith’s face. “Thanks for saving me, Keith. But I have to admit, I’m a little sad?”

In response to Lance’s adorable pout, the mermaid tilted his head to the side and furrowed his brows, the smile on his face beginning to droop a little bit.

“I mean, our first kiss and I don’t even remember it! Seems a little unfair, dontcha think?” he teased, scrunching up his nose as he watched the smirk grow on Keith’s face.

“Oh, it was very romantic,” he began, his voice sobering even as the shit-eating grin overtook his lips. “After I swam like half a mile to drag your ass onto the shore, I realize you’re not breathing. Being the responsible mermaid I am, I check your pulse and lemme tell you, it was weak, man. So, I start doing mouth-to-mouth,” Keith leaned in, his hands emphasizing his words as he stared captivatingly into Lance’s eyes, “and after a minute, guess what?”

Playing along, it was Lance’s turn to tilt his head and act confused. “What happened next?” His voice was filled with feigned anticipation and held almost a mocking tone.

“You coughed seawater into my face,” He deadpanned, his voice utterly monotone.

Tracing his tongue across his teeth, Lance let out a low whistle, his cheeks once again flushed as he avoided Keith’s eyes. “Wow, that certainly does sound romantic!” he forced out, sounding strained. “I feel bad that I don’t remember it at all.”

“I live in fish piss and this was gross as fuck. Certainly made a great first impression,” Keith slipped back into a flirtatious voice, placing one hand on the rock in between them and letting the other chill behind his head, hoping that his nearly-nonexistent muscles looked alright in the moonlight. Marvelling in how dry his hair was, the mermaid suddenly became very preoccupied with the fluffiness of his hair. “Wait! Lance, feel my hair! It’s so soft!”

And he was shoving his head under Lance’s hand to share with him the beauty of dry hair. “Okay, okay, I get that your hair is soft, but I have to ask. Why the mullet? Is it a mermaid thing? Because that look is _so_ going out of style.” 

Taking a moment to enjoy Lance’s fingers carding through his hair, Keith had to force himself to sit upright again and make him stop touching him (which he really _didn’t_ want to happen, but Keith was shoving that little voice into the far reaches of his mind).

“It’s only been a year and a half! This look was totally in when I was human!” Keith huffed, fluffing up his hair with his fingers, the longest locks curling upward as they lightly caressed the top of his shoulders. Unconsciously, it seemed that now the boys were only a matter of inches apart, crimson scales reflecting the moonlight right next to smooth, tan skin spattered with freckles.

Lance turned to face Keith nearly completely, one leg bent and hiked up on the rock between them. “I hate to break it to you, really,” he told him, his voice dropping as he leaned in, his deep blue eyes staring straight into Keith’s. “But it’s hideous.” 

The mermaid had no idea if it was supposed to be flirty or not, but, it didn’t really matter what Lance was saying and Keith could hardly hear his words anyway, over the harsh beating of his heart, loud and persistent. 

“Thanks,” Keith hissed back, a smile pulling at the corners of his lips. The air between them was charged with tension so utterly different from the awkwardness before.

Trapped, like treading water in a circle about one another, never breaking eye contact. And Keith had a million thoughts racing through his head. Because his emotions wanted to kiss Lance, he definitely shouldn’t (actual attraction had to be avoided at all costs), but it would speed up the process of getting Lance to fall in love with him. Yet, what if he was reading the look in his gorgeous eyes completely wrong? What if Lance didn’t want to kiss him as much as Keith wanted to kiss him?

“How long are you at the beach for?” Keith settled for, his voice quiet and sad as he leaned away from the human slowly, but refusing to break eye contact.

“The end of the summer,” he responded, biting his lip and swallowing, batted his eyelashes as he too leaned away. “So like four more weeks, then school starts up again. Senior year!” And the smile that spread across his face is breathtaking.

Keith grins back in turn, his eyes squinting almost closed in his silent joy. “I’m so glad we still have a lot of time together.” And suddenly anxiety fluttered alive in the mermaid’s chest, his breathe shallow, his eyes wide. “Y-you will be coming back, right?” Keith frantically placed his hand on top of the one Lance had splayed on the rock between them.

With a small movement, Lance made it so their fingers could intertwine and he squeezed gently. “Of course I’ll be back. I wouldn’t miss talking to you for the world. Plus, I’ve still got a heavy debt to repay, right?”


	4. Faltering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys are realizing that their feelings run deeper than they originally knew, or wanted for that matter. They both find themselves in rather precarious situations, a question hanging in the air. Is it truly worth it?

Unfortunately, after about an hour of research, it seemed to Lance that there had been a mistake made in the construction of the Hubble Space Telescope and it had only been able to produce super blurry and virtually unusable photos. All of this, Lance found out on a crappy computer at the library that was nearly forty five minutes away from his beach house.

He had it pretty bad.

Nonetheless, Lance printed out two of the photos and a summary article to present Keith the next time they met. He had ended up staying and talking with Keith about the most mindless things until the sun was almost rising. As soon as he had noticed the lightening of the sky, an array of pinks and yellow, Lance had jumped up, let out a string of curses and promised Keith he would meet him back there in two nights.

After the fifteen minute jog, Lance was breathing hard and hurried to sneak back into his house unnoticed (but armed with the excuse that he had wanted to see the sunrise--dumb, but plausible). Flopping in bed, he tried his hardest to fall asleep and get at least an hour in, but his mind was racing with everything having to do with that damn mermaid.

Lance ached to know more, to understand the intricacies of who Keith was, as a human and as a mermaid. Throughout the night, he had been itching to ask how he had gotten transformed into a mermaid, but was too afraid to pry into his personal life. He figured it would come up sooner or later. In the meantime, he was researching the Hubble Space Telescope.

With the photos and the article in hand, Lance hopped into his mom’s car and started making his way back to the beach, a weight settling in his chest. His heart desperately wanted one thing, but his head was trying to make an argument that maybe having a secret mermaid consort wasn’t the _best_ thing in the world.

Whether or a Not to Have a Mermaid Boyfriend  
By Lance McClain

 

**Pros:**

  * He was a mermaid
  * He was hot
  * He really wasn’t that old
  * He was nice
  * Funny
  * Attractive
  * He made Lance’s heart soar
  * He needed something (and although he didn’t know what it was, exactly, Lance knew he was helping)



**Cons:**

  * He was a mermaid
  * He carried a lot of baggage
  * He lived in the water
  * Probably couldn’t live anywhere else but the water
  * _Dick???_
  * Lance was only at the beach for another month
  * Lance was exactly what he needed, but then he would be gone, how is that fair?



 

Even after the forty-five minute drive, Lance had no answer. All he knew was that he had to share these fucking photos with Keith. Maybe it would be best to take it one day at a time, address the situation as time went on, instead of mulling it over for hours on end, trying to find a solution.

And, of course, as soon as he walked in the door, his mother was berating him with questions while he stifled a yawn. “I was at the library in the next town over! I told you that before I left, mamá!” He protested.

“I needed the car half an hour ago, Lance! I thought you would be gone an hour, at most. What on earth were you even doing ‘at the library’?” His mother asked, anger palpable in the air as she raised an eyebrow in suspicion.

“I was researching the, uh, the Hubble Space Telescope for, for a friend,” Lance stumbled, holding out one of the photos the telescope had taken. When her eyes narrowed at the blurriness of the image, Lance went on to explain, “There was in issue in the caretaking of the lenses and they ended up screwing on the lense incorrectly, making the photos unusable. I believe they’re organizing a team to essentially, well, put a pair of glasses on the telescope.”

Mrs. McClain nodded slowly before going back to stirring whatever she had on the stove. “Alright, alright, I believe you. Now go take a nap.”

She didn’t need to tell him twice as he let out another yawn, nodding and padding out of the kitchen, glad that he wasn’t scolded more (in all honesty, he didn’t even do anything to award a scolding, but his mother could be brutal).

Thanking whatever gods controlled the weather, clouds were forming in the sky as he drew his blinds and curled up in bed, a pleasantly cool breeze working its way through his room. Exhaustion heavy in his bones, the boy fell asleep, dreaming of shimmering, crimson scales and pale moonlight reflecting off the waves.

~ ~ ~

When Keith slipped back into The Treehouse, Pidge was angry. He didn’t even get past the tunnel when he could feel the electric mood in the water. Squeezing his eyes shut, Keith made his way to the main room, poking his head above the water with trepidation.

“How was your _seaweed_ , Keith?” Pidge ground out, her arms folded across her chest, sitting on the shore of the cavern.

Staring her down from the water, Keith deadpanned, “Delicious.”

“Stop with the bullshit, Keith,” Hunk groaned, knowing that sooner or later, Pidge was going to go loose on the boy. “You promised you would be careful.” His words were heavy, sad.

“It’s not like anyone else saw us.” Keith rolled his eyes. “But how careful do you want me to be? I have to make this kid fall in love with me. You know that.” Instead of raising his voice and letting the fire in his stomach vomit out of his mouth, he tried to stay reasonable, keep his voice quiet.

Pidge let out a dark chuckle, shaking her head. “Unbelievable. You already like him, don’t you?”

Having no idea how she possible gathered that from his few words, Keith immediately blushed and he knew it was all over. Knowing that he wasn’t the best liar, sarcasm was his first line of defense, but anything he tried to say now would be flimsy at best.

“This is what I meant by careful, guppy.” She let out a sigh. “You won’t do it. Or, if you do, you’ll end up hurting yourself in the process.”

As much as Keith enjoyed to entertain the idea that Pidge was wrong, there was no way around this one, and it ached. It ached so badly in his chest that it was taking all his energy to not sink to the bottom of the cavern.

Hunk’s gentle voice pulled Keith from his own destructive thoughts, “It’s okay, you know. You don’t have to decide right now. I’m obviously biased, but maybe you’ll change your mind about wanting to leave the ocean.” His hopeful smile nearly broke Keith’s heart.

“Can we _actually_ go out looking for lunch? I’m starving,” Keith tried to laugh, but it came out a little sadder than he was expecting. Fortunately, Pidge and Hunk smiled, slipping back into the water and following Keith out of The Treehouse.

Normally, Keith settled for some seaweed, kelp, or sea cucumbers, with the occasional clam or oyster if the mermaids were feeling feisty. They were on the hunt for some quality food (some of the seaweed could be slimy if it was too old or something had messed with it before) and weren’t afraid to travel quite a distance to find some. Good eats in the ocean were sometimes hard to find.

Thankfully, Pidge and Hunk knew some places to get started and Hunk even started going off on some weird rotation chart they used to make sure that they didn’t “hunt” too much in one place. Keith didn’t quite understand, but nodded through the explanation, understanding that they were going to have to swim a little further today.

“ _Shit_!” Pidge let out before quickly scrambling behind a coral reef, grabbing the fin running down Keith’s spine and tugging him forcibly behind her. “We’re near a den. I don’t know if we should get closer . . .” Her voice trailed off as she poked her head above the reef to snag another look at the creature’s den.

Following her lead, Keith also rose a bit above the reef to look at the den, which really didn’t look like much, if he was being honest. It was a shallow cave, long and rather flat, algae growing on the rocks around it, partially covering the entrance. But, there was one thing that caught the mermaid’s attention settled in the back of the cave, only one ray of light shining upon it.

A chest. Like, a legit _treasure chest_. A sort of childish giddiness filled Keith’s heart as a smile broke out across his face. And the light was gleaming on something that Keith couldn’t quite make out, but it almost looked like a pendant on a chain.

A _silver_ pendant on a chain.

“Pidge.” Keith began, drawing the mermaid’s attention. When she noticed where his eyes were trained, the girl took in a breath and began speaking to him in a dangerously low tone, her eyes narrowed. But Keith wasn’t listening. All he saw glimmering in front of him was the perfect opportunity. “I have to,” he breathed, inching toward the end of the reef, closer to the den.

This time, Hunk grabbed his arm with a single, strong hand. “Keith, it’s too dangerous. It might not even be silver,” he warned, his voice almost pleading with him to stay.

“But what is if _is_ silver, huh?” Keith responded, anger lacing his words. “I can’t just sit back and let this opportunity slip between my scales!” And with that, he ripped his arm out of Hunk’s hold and quickly swam forward, dodging Pidge’s attempt to yank him backwards by his tail.

Bolting into the den, Keith threw open the chest and saw the necklace in amongst golden coins (doubloons, if you will), a tiara, a china plate, and even a set of golden goblets. Grabbing ahold of the necklace--seemingly the only silver thing in there--Keith turned about to speed out of the den before the creature came back to its home.

Unfortunately for him, the creature wasn’t actually out of its den, but merely taking a nap in the sand. And it looked _very_ angry for having been woken up. It most certainly didn’t help that she had woken up to some obnoxious mermaid wrist-deep in her treasure chest.

Paralyzed with fear, Keith had no exit, no way to get past the creature, and no way to know if there was any possible way for him to get out of this situation alive. When the monster began to pulsate with electricity, Keith’s soul left his body, already content to begin its descent to hell, no need to go through the excruciating death that surely awaited him.

“Hey! Ugly!” Pidge called from behind the den, armed with a large chunk of coral, Hunk behind her with a stone. “Leave the fucking guppy alone!” And the creature seemed to blink a few times at Keith before turning around and buzzing in Pidge’s direction.

The pendant was burning in Keith’s hand, stabbing into his palm as he realized he was clenching it in his fist. Continuing with the taunts, Pidge slowly began swimming away from the den, attempting to lure the creature away from Keith. Hunk remained mostly in place, trying to see if he could sneak in behind the preoccupied monster and smash it over the head with the stone he was holding in his grasp.

Counting to five after he could no longer see the creature, Keith raced out of the den and slipped the necklace over his head for safe keeping (the inconvenience of not having pockets, example A). In a flurry of movement, Pidge shot up from the ground, swimming hard and fast up to the surface, much faster than the monster could ever dream of going. And while the creature’s head spun, enveloped in bubbles and confusion, Hunk slammed the stone down onto its skull before shooting out of the commotion, right past Keith and into the depths.

Shocked, Keith took half a second to jump in surprise before he was right on Hunk’s tail, adrenaline pumping through his system. “That was an angry electric stargazer! You’re lucky to be alive,” Hunk informed him in a frightened voice as they continued away from the den of the creature.

“Wh-where’s Pidge?” Keith asked nervously, looking around and slowing his pace, eyes wide. “Is she alright? Oh my god, do we need to go back?!”

If it weren’t for the mermaid’s snarky voice exasperatedly telling him she was right behind him, Keith really would have started swimming back. “Calm down, guppy,” she lightly reprimanded, rolling her eyes and coming to a stop. Hunk had already made sure they were far enough from the creature’s den that they weren’t at risk anymore.

And Keith knew what was coming (his muscles tensed as soon as he noticed the girl take a huge inhale), and yet he couldn’t brace himself for Pidge’s ear-piercing scream of annoyance. “What the actual _fuck_ , Keith? What’s wrong with you? I cannot, _cannot_ , believe that you would do something so goddamn idiotic. What in the name of the seven seas is your problem? The great goddess Atargatis must have been watching over your sorry ass, you bottom-feeding, sand-licking, coral-faced guppy!”

Hunk wasn’t letting him off the hook, either. “How could you possibly not know that stargazer’s live for over 15 years and amass their treasure over their entire life? They collect precious metals because the type of algae that grow on them is particularly hearty and works well to provide them with energy for their body to produce _venom_. Not to mention that she was gearing up to shock you! Stupid,” he explained, agitated.

“Yeah, yeah, but everything turned out okay,” Keith said with a devilish smile, picking up the pendant from around his neck and letting the others see. The pendant was a small silver locket, engraved with delicate swirls and spirals, sand and dirt floating off it as he rubbed a gentle thumb over it. “It’s real silver, right?”

Pidge took the pendant from his hand and roughly jerked the boy forward as she brought it up to her eye, searching for an engraving or some type of identifying mark. Testing the metal between her teeth, she dropped the locket and sighed. “Yeah,” she replied dejectedly. “It’s real.”

Without thinking it through, Keith wrapped her up in his arms, squeezing her tight against him. “Thank you,” he whispered, his voice belying the depth of his words. Her small arms linked behind his waist and she leaned her head on his shoulder.

“No problem,” she said, a lump in her throat.

And then Hunk’s large arms were wrapping up the both of them, silence engulfing them as they soaked in the inevitable. With the weight of the necklace around Keith’s neck, it was more real than ever before. He was going to take this boy’s life, and he was going to leave the closest friends he’d ever made.

~ ~ ~

Folding the photos and the article until it fit into the pocket of his swim trunks, Lance winced in the sudden brightness of his phone screen as he checked the time. He was crouched in the threshold of his room, ascertaining that everyone was asleep in the house before he attempted to sneak out--again.

Fingers trembling, Lance slipped out of his room, smiling at the pillow he had propped under his covers to surely fool anyone into believing he was actually still in bed. Quieting his breath, he gently eased the front door closed and made his way tentatively down the steps. After a count to ten, Lance turned tail and began running, his blue converse slapping against the pavement, his hair curling in the wind.

If he had any sense, he probably should have been embarrassed by the amount of joy and eagerness that fluttered underneath his breastbone. But he was getting to see Keith again. His mermaid friend who is a boy who might want to be more than just that. Lance giggled like a toddler at the thought.

Before he even truly realized it, he was near the inlet and desperately out of breath. Taking a second to compose himself, taking in gulps of the briny sea air, Lance softly made his way to the water’s edge, slipping off his converse and enjoying the sensation of the cool waves lapping at his feet.

As he emerged past the outcropping keeping the main stretch of beach from the cove, Lance excitedly looked around for Keith and pouted when he didn’t see him. Taking his time, the boy stumbled out to where the two had been talking only a couple of nights ago, a few meters from shore, looking out at the moon. It seemed like Lance had been dreaming about him for an eternity.

And all of the sudden, Keith’s face popped up from the water and his cool fingers slipped around his ankles. “Hi!” The mermaid was adorable, his hair stuck up in odd directions, his face backlit by the moonlight, and yet his purple eyes were sparkling brightly. There was a grin curling his lips that gave away the secrets of his feelings, the happiness that executed from him.

Unfortunately, Lance was unable to take note of any of that adorableness since he was too busy, attempting to kick him in the face, a screamed, “Fuck!” rupturing the stillness of the air.

But then Keith looked even more gorgeous as laughter bubbled off his lips, his eyes squinting almost shut as his hold tightened on his ankles. Lance was fine with being the mermaid’s anchor to shore, but a little warning would have been nice, he thought to himself as he held a hand over his heart (which was doing backflips for a number of different reasons).

“It’s good to see you again,” Keith told him after the laughter drained from him. “You look really good tonight.” He batted his eyelashes and slid his hands up Lance’s tan calves. And Lance was sure the mermaid stifled a giggle at the blush coating his cheeks.

Biting his lip, the boy drew his gaze back to Keith, whispering, “It’s good to see you too.” The moment of sincerity lingered for a minute longer, before Lance jumped back into his senses. “I brought you photos! And, well, an article?”

And Keith’s jaw dropped, instantly making the hour and a half drive to the library and back worth it. “From the Hubble Space Telescope?”

The mermaid pushed himself onto the rock and shook his hands, scattering water droplets everywhere and slyly ran his hands down Lance’s shirt to dry them off before taking the papers from the boy. Attempting to contain his blush, Lance coughed slightly before delving into the explanation of the horribly blurry photographs and how they messed up the lens of the telescope.

“Those damn idiots,” Keith growled as he crinkled the paper in his grasp. “I could do a better job at working on this telescope and, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a mermaid!” His tone was the edge of serious and playful, confusing Lance who really didn’t want to answer poorly.

He settled for a smile and a soft, “I’m sure you could.” Then, turning his attention to the sky with a snort. “I think we have a better view from here than the telescope right now.”

“True! It’s even more gorgeous further into the ocean where there’s less light pollution.” Keith let out a laugh, leaning back on his hands and staring at the sky. “I always wanted to be an astronaut. I was planning on studying astrophysics when I was a human. Not really something I can pursue now, is it?” he questioned sadly, sighing gently.

Calming his racing heart (or trying to, anyway) Lance hesitantly dropped his head onto Keith’s shoulder. “That really sucks, man. I’m sorry.” And Keith let his own head rest gently atop Lance’s hair, and the boy soaked in the sensation of their closeness.

Then quietly, filled with forlorn sincerity, “Tell me about yourself, Lance. Are you going to college after senior year?”

The warmth that spread through his chest at the mermaid remembering that he was going into his last year of high school was a little more than embarrassing, but he nuzzled his head a bit more into Keith’s shoulder and answered in a similarly soft voice, “Yeah, but I have to go to community college for the first two years because my older sister Veronica has one more year of college and my parents can't really afford for me to go where I want . . .”

“Oh, I get that. Most of the time the first courses are the same for all colleges, right? Maybe you can transfer where you wanna go,” Keith replied thoughtfully, letting the moonlight lull them closer to each other, his scales gleaming.

Lance nodded against Keith’s shoulder. “I want to be a vet. Med school is expensive. I'm worried I won't be able to make enough money. It's fucking stressful, man.”

At that, Keith lifted his head, causing Lance to do the same, and the mermaid grabbed Lance’s face gently, cupping his cheeks (which instantly turned bright red).

“Hey,” he said faintly as Lance attempted to memorize the complex pattern of interwoven threads of lavender and violet that swirled in the mermaid’s eyes. “It's all going to be okay. Things like this never seem like they're going to work out. Yet, more often than not, they do. You're going to be fine. I promise.”

Lance’s heart was in his throat and preventing any words from scraping out. So he sat there, on a wet, jagged rock, staring into the beautiful eyes of a mermaid boy in the moonlight, dumbfounded. As Keith’s thumb traced the top Lance’s cheekbone with a gentle movement he felt himself leaning into the mermaid’s hands.

Keith’s hands migrated from his cheeks to cup the back of his neck and Lance wound his fingers into the half-drying strands of black hair curling at the back of the mermaid’s neck. The moonlight between them carved itself into a sliver as they inched closer to one another; Lance could feel Keith’s quick breaths as he began to let his eyes drop closed.

But Lance’s eyes widened with surprise as Keith let out a broken sob, pulling away from Lance with a horrified expression on his face, slapping a hand over his mouth as tears formed in his eyes.

“W-what’s wrong?!” Lance cried, confusion and a twinge of fear in his voice, praying it wasn't something he’d done.

“I'm so sorry!” Keith yelled out, voice cracking, his tears falling as he pushed himself violently off the rock, the water splashing roughly as the photos Lance had printed fluttered into the ocean. The papers laid carefully atop the sea’s surface until the water saturated through the paper, dragging it selfishly under the gentle waves.

Lance was left feeling hollow, confused, and overwhelmingly anguished. Hugging his knees to his chest, he stared at the way the moonlight caressed the waves, replaying the moment in his mind, trying to determine what had happened, what he had done wrong.

He didn't even try to make it home before sunrise.

~ ~ ~

As the tears bubbled around him, getting caught in his eyelashes, Keith couldn't stop the moment from replaying in his mind. They had been so close to kissing, so close to moving ahead in their relationship, no matter what grounds it was built upon.

_Why am I such a motherfucking imbecile?_

The answer was clear, yet he wouldn't allow himself to admit it. He would shove the love manifesting for that boy down, deep down, until it wasn't even remotely identifiable. His feelings didn't matter. It only mattered that he could see Shiro again, get his life back, apply to NASA and fix the goddamn Hubble Space Telescope.

And that would never happen if he cried every time he realized that this was something real, something unadulterated for that poor boy. His dreams for the future, what he wanted to do and how he was going to do it, even if it wasn't ideal, it was life. Keith would be taking all that away from him. There would be nothing left but a crushed soul and broken dreams, crumbling to the bottom of the ocean.

But wasn’t that exactly what Matt had done to him? Left him stranded, alone in the sea without a clue of what was going on, what he had walked into by falling for the mermaid. Even so, was it fair to take those emotions, bottled up and suppressed from attempting to forget about Matt, and twist them up until what he was doing to Lance was justified? How could it be fair?

It wasn’t fucking fair that he was trapped down here, and it wasn’t fair that he was going to trade his own sense of moral consciousness to get his legs back, and it wasn’t fair that Lance was going to be the one to pay for it.

But, in the end, life wasn’t fair, and there was nothing but flimsy feelings keeping him from getting his old life back. Lance was just collateral damage.

He slapped his cheeks a few times, scattering the teardrops from his eyelashes and attempting to get a hold of himself. As his emotions calmed down and his racing heart eased in his chest, Keith squeezed his eyes shut, the realization hitting him. If he truly wanted to make this boy fall in love with him, he was going to have to try a whole lot harder after his fuckup that night.

Squirming into The Treehouse, Keith swam into the main room and pulled himself out of the water, unsurprised to find that the place was empty. Hunk and Pidge liked to hunt for shellfish at night and spent a couple days a week gathering them.

Thankfully, it gave Keith some peace and quiet to formulate how he was going to cover for his freak out with Lance. Obviously, the boy would need an explanation of what had gone through Keith’s head right before he began crying. And oh god, Lance probably thought it was his own fault and the mermaid let out a groan, throwing his arm over his eyes as he stretched out on the rock.

Even when the other two mermaids slinked into the house, Keith was still at a loss for what he was going to tell Lance. Reluctant to explain his situation to either of them, Keith turned his back to the water and pretended to sleep as soon as he had heard them enter The Treehouse. He wasn’t quite ready to face his failures.

But, after the whole day spent awkwardly asking Hunk and Pidge to rephrase their question because he was too damn preoccupied with a certain human boy, he knew there was no way he was going to think of something on his own.

A day after the incident, the three of them were enjoying seaweed and lounging on a sunbathing rock far from any sort of shore. “I, uh, well, I need your guy’s, uh, haha, help?” Keith worked out, scratching the back of his neck with a tentative smile pulling up at his lips.

“With what?” Pidge asked flippantly, the seaweed still gnashed between her teeth. Hunk just turned his head to the side in gentle confusion.

Coughing, Keith bit his lip and took a deep breath. “I was going to kiss Lance but instead I freaked out and started crying in front of him and oh my god I’m such an idiot and I really do think I’m falling for him but like also I really want my fucking legs back and I have no idea what to tell him? Like I can’t tell him ‘oh yeah I started crying because I like you and really _don’t_ want to sacrifice you to the ocean so I can get my legs back’ right?” His words were strung together by panic, his eyes wide with fright as he poured his heart out to his best friends.

“O-oh,” Hunk replied lightly, looking away as a broken cough that sounded close to a frog’s croak escaped his lips. “Well, I can see why this would be a, uh, situation.”

Keith buried his face in his hands, mumbling, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t,” Pidge replied quietly, causing Keith to peek at her from behind his fingers with a confused look. “You don’t have to do it, you know. Just enjoy his company while it lasts. Do something more meaningful than leaving us behind.”

When Keith didn’t respond, his hands dropped from his face and into his lap, taking his lips between his teeth and avoiding her eye contact. With a reluctant sigh cutting through the dense silence, Pidge continued, “Or you could just tell him that you’re really afraid that you’re getting too attached and you like him just that damn much that you don’t want to hurt him. Blame it on your ‘blossoming affection’ for the boy and it’s sure to increase his own love for you.”

“Yeah, yeah! And you could totally tell him that you were trying to protect his feelings, but your’s were too strong and you had to meet up again! Nice thinking, Pidge,” Hunk added with a bright smile, combating the sarcastic tone the girl had taken on.

Keith opened his mouth to give a counterpoint but the words stopped in his throat. Instead, he just smiled and let out a light laugh. “That’s actually not a bad idea.”

“Lesson number 58: always listen to my advice, guppy,” Pidge said with a grin and a wink.

“I thought you were on number 40?” asked Hunk with a raised eyebrow.

Rolling her eyes, Pidge exasperatedly replied, “Oh, whatever. Just take my damn advice, okay?”

///

As the sun began to dip below the horizon, Keith made his way to the inlet, fully prepared not to see Lance, a weight settling in his chest. The aching in his heart was concerning and the longing to soak up the boy’s presence was physically draining. Swimming right up to the shore, Keith pulled himself onto the beach, a good distance away from the water’s edge to make sure his message would be preserved.

LANCE --  
I’M SORRY. I’LL BE WAITING HERE EVERY NIGHT FOR YOU.  
PLEASE COME BACK.

With a sigh and an inexplicable pinch of tears at the corners of his eyes, Keith awkwardly pushed himself back into the water, his crimson scales gleaming in the moonlight that had watched over them. Without truly thinking about what he was doing, he squeezed his eyes shut and sent a prayer to Atargatis, the goddess of mermaids. It left a strange taste in his mouth since he hadn’t believed in God before. But, then again, he didn’t believe in mermaids either.

Still, all night, he sat on their rocks, looking out at the ocean and turning around every time there was the slightest of breezes, hoping to see Lance, silhouetted in the darkness, walking toward him.

When he returned to The Treehouse, the two other mermaids were all over him, asking him how it went, wondering if lesson 58 paid off. Keith just bit his lip and hauled himself out of the water, flopping uselessly onto the unforgiving rock beneath him.

“Oh. Oh, _shit_ ,” Pidge let out. “I knew you liked him but this is a different level of ‘like’. Damn.”

Keith hid his face and curled his tail to his chest, willing his tears not to fall as he felt Hunk’s warm hand on his arm. “Hey, it’s all going to be okay, man. He’ll show eventually, I promise.”

Letting out a wet laugh, Keith nodded from behind his hands because his tears dripped down the side of his face as Pidge’s hand ruffled his wet hair. “Lesson number 62--”

“Pidge, literally _yesterday_ you were on 58, what’s--”

“Shh,” she responded rather violently, flicking her head to glare at Hunk and soliciting a small laugh from the sad Keith. “Lesson number 62: you’re going to get through this one way or another. Have strength and believe in yourself.”

And Keith sucked in a cracked breath, the tears blurring his vision and rolling down his face. “Th-thanks,” he stuttered as light began to stream in from the top of the cavern. Feeling Hunk’s hand slip off his arm, Keith heard the gentle noises of the two mermaids sliding back under the water, leaving Keith with nothing but his swirling emotions and pale sunlight.


	5. Suffocating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Keith runs away from Lance in tears, both boys find that they hold many conflicting feelings about whether or not this relationship should continue. Lies drip from both of their lips, saturating their relationship.

Lance dragged his feet through the warm sand as the sun beat down on him, his sunburn from last week finally turning into awkward tan lines. When he got home, heavy-hearted, his mother immediately berated him with questions about where he was, what he was doing, and why he wanted to worry his poor mamá. Without answering, the boy just fell into her arms and stared at nothing--all his tears, his confusion, his concern washed away with the outgoing tide.

He spent the rest of the day in his room with the curtains drawn.

Swirling through his mind were impossible notions of what had gone through Keith’s mind right before he burst into tears and dove back into the water. And the anxiety just increased every minute Lance remained curled up in his bed. So, it was especially concerning when, after waking up from a nap, he couldn’t fight the urge to go see the goddamn mermaid.

His aching heart needed an explanation, but he knew that if he went back to that inlet and Keith wasn’t there, there was no way he would recover. Whether or not this infatuation began because the mermaid saved Lance’s life, it was real. It was potent and tangible and needed answers.

But that night was not going to work out. Obviously, he had some explaining to do of his own. He crept out of his bedroom as he smelled whatever fabulous concoction his mom was cooking upstairs. Padding up the stairs slowly, Lance knew that he didn’t have a good alibi for where he was, nor the reason for his sadness (his mother could read him like a book, no matter how well he attempted to hide his true feelings).

“Mamá . . .” Lance began, slipping into a seat at the table, only a few steps away from the stove where she was. “I’m sorry for worrying you. I went to the beach to watch the sunrise and, well, to be honest, I’ve been kind of scared to go swimming ever since I almost drowned.” Playing with the fraying hem of his t-shirt, he avoided the gaze of his mother, who had since closed the space between them. “So this morning, I was wading in the water, watching the sunrise when I turned a-around and I realized I was up to my chest in water and I just, just . . . panicked.”

As he let out a sigh, ashamed at how the lie was dripping off his tongue, his mother placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I managed to get back to shore, but I was pretty shaken up and, uh, I guess the time just slipped away. Sorry.”

She scooped him up in a hug and squeezed him tightly. “I’m sorry, Lance. I know how much you used to like swimming. Everything will be okay soon. I promise.”

Lance flung his own arms around her and buried his face into her shoulder. “I hope so too, mamá.” His heart was thudding in his chest for a handful of different reasons, and he just wanted to melt into his mother’s embrace and never leave. He didn’t want to face the ocean or the creatures that lived there for a long, long time.

Of course, that wasn’t what happened.

Four days after Keith _didn’t_ kiss Lance, the boy was slipping out of his house as the moon rose in the sky, wearing an old blue baseball tee and swim trunks, anxiety thrumming in his veins as he walked down to the inlet.

He couldn’t help the sighs that kept escaping his lips, unsure if this was the right thing to be doing. All he wanted was to see Keith again. All he wanted was to understand what had happened. All he wanted was to grab that fucking mermaid and smash their lips together.

Shaking, Lance stumbled over the rocks and emerged into the cove, his heart instantly stopping in his chest as he noticed the writing in the sand.

And then he was crying. He was so filled with joy that he hadn’t messed everything up between them that the tears just began rolling down his face as soon as he had read through the barely-there message detailing that Keith would be waiting for him.

With his heart fluttering in his chest, Lance left his sandals on the beach and made his way down the outcropping to where they had met before.

As soon as he let his feet dangle in the water, he heard a voice from behind him let out an excited gasp. “L-Lance!”

The boy turned to see Keith, tears in the corner of his eyes, a smile bright across his face. Before Lance even had a chance to think about it, he was catapulting himself off the rock and into the water, into Keith’s arms.

“Oh, Lance I’m so sorry! I missed you so much and I was so worried you weren’t going to come back but here you are, oh my god, here you are!” Keith babbled out, a smile bright on his face. The mermaid’s arms were supporting most of Lance’s weight, holding him up from under his ass as his tail swished back and forth to keep them above water. The boy’s arms were wrapped gently around the mermaid’s neck, their eyes interlocked and never veering from one another.

Lance’s smile was uncontrollable. “You have no idea how happy I am to see you. I missed you too.” Resting his forehead against Keith’s, their air between them shifted quietly. “But, I have to ask . . . w-what happened?”

The boy pulled away to look Keith in the eyes as the mermaid readjusted his hold on him a bit, looking briefly at the stars.

~ ~ ~

With the necklace wrapped several times around his wrist, Keith made his way to the inlet knowing that Lance wouldn’t be there, yet hope was still alit in his breast as he swam toward their meeting place.

As he neared the surface, he could see the moonlight beginning to filter through the water. Keith attempted to warm his heart with the knowledge that he could look at the stars that night (which was dumb, since he’d spent the last four nights floating atop the water, staring at the stars).

But his heart jumped into his throat at he saw a shadow falling across the waves, followed by two feet dipping into the water. He couldn’t keep the gasp that left his mouth or the stuttered exclamation of Lance’s name as he felt tears prick the corners of his eyes. Lance turned around and before Keith could say or do anything else, the boy was scrambling over himself and jumping into the water, tackling the mermaid.

The happiness that immediately filled Keith’s chest, the lightness he felt all the way to his fingertips could be matched by no emotion. As he hurried to hoist Lance up into a comfortable position (his hands right under Lance’s ass, how could he resist?), he began incoherently going on about how he missed him and how he was sorry.

Lance’s beautiful blue eyes were staring right at him as his words pierced his heart, “You have no idea how happy I am to see you. I missed you too.”

Keith thought he could die right then and there, knowing that Lance didn’t hate him for abandoning him. But his next words stabbed into his heart in a completely different way, shattering the joy coursing through his body, even as Lance’s forehead warmly connected with his own, bringing their lips closer than ever.

“But, I have to ask . . . w-what happened?”

Clenching his jaw, Keith looked to the sky for a moment before letting out a sigh. “It’s just, I--uh.” The mermaid hadn’t been expecting to cry, but sure enough, there were tears in his eyes as he struggled to get his words out.

As one rolled down his cheek, Keith locked his eyes onto Lance’s. “I like you. I like you a lot. And I just, I got _scared_. I don’t know how all this works, and I c-couldn’t help but think that maybe, maybe leaving you would be best for both of us.” Keith let out a broken laugh as Lance moved one hand to wipe away the mermaid’s tears with a calloused thumb. “But, as you can see, I didn’t do a very good job at staying away.”

“Thank god for that,” Lance whispered back as worked his other hand into Keith’s hair, bringing their faces closer. Melting into the warmth of his hand, the mermaid’s anxieties flared in his chest once again, nervous of what may come of this. But they were so close, their lips only a breath apart. Closing his eyes, Keith leaned into the kiss, savoring the feeling of Lance’s lips on his, silencing the voices in his head.

He tasted like salt and cinnamon and moonlight.

Lance’s hands weaved through his hair, pressing them ever closer to one another as Keith slowly and gently deepened the kiss, feeling something so utterly perfect blossoming between them. Everything about him was intoxicating, and Keith just wanted to keep drinking him in.

“I can’t help it. I think I’m falling in love with you,” Lance breathed with a smile and half-lidded eyes. Keith’s heart jumped into his throat, panic filling him as joy tingled in his fingertips. Confused by his own conflicting emotions, he silenced all thoughts in his head and slammed his lips against the boy’s with an intensity that had been missing.

The mermaid tried hard not to think about the words that Matt had whispered to him, the words Keith had whispered back. He tried not to think about Lance holding the same cavernous ache in his chest that Keith still harbored, mourning what he had imagined between him and Matt.

He pressed harder into Lance, trying to make certain that he knew that this was something real, something tangible that existed. The emotions that Keith tried so hard to keep out of their relationship appeared in stark detail as they moved in sync with one another, Lance smiling against his lips with such a happiness that he could hardly bare it.

And the words burned in Keith’s throat, longing to jump out, to tell Lance that he was falling in love too. But they burned almost as much as the necklace wrapped tightly around his wrist did. There was no way that he was going to admit to himself, to Lance, to anyone, that he was in love with a human.

There wasn’t a way this could end happily.

So Keith distracted himself by enjoying the feeling of Lance against him, trailing his lips down the boy’s jawline, eliciting soft tugs on his hair and barely-suppressed moans. Lance’s legs wrapped a little tighter around Keith’s midsection while the mermaid ran his hands under the floating fabric of his tee-shirt from his hips to the bottom of his shoulder blades, savoring the coils of muscles underneath his fingertips.

Gently pulling his lips from Lance’s heated skin, Keith settled his hands on his lower back and rested his forehead against his. Their lips were slightly swollen, and Lance had a smile across his face as they breathed a little heavily, staring into each other’s eyes.

Keith slowly allowed a smile to curve his lips as he admired the moonlight gleaming on Lance’s face, defining his cheekbones and the curve of his nose. “I really fucking missed you, Lance.”

And they dissolved into a deluge of laughter and kisses, swallowed up by the moonlight.

~ ~ ~

They agreed to meet the next night, unable to wait any longer than that, and, to be honest, Lance found it pretty hard to leave even as the morning sun beams began to grace the horizon.

Lance left the inlet with a smile on his face and a sort of happiness that had scarcely flooded his being ever before. While his mind wandered too far into the darkness of _this is never going to work out_ , Lance reminded himself that he had two more weeks at the beach, and he was going to make the most of it.

Getting home just as the sun came up, he knew he didn’t have to worry as he had an artistically-crafted lie as an alibi (although it weighed heavy on his heart knowing his mother truly believed him). Yet, he remained as silent as possible as he slipped back inside, his shirt damp and sticking to him awkwardly. He changed into fresh shorts and a tank top before flopping back in bed and scrolling mind-numbingly on instagram.

The day went as normal as it probably could have. He finished reading a book for school, built a sandcastle with his niece, and buried his nephew in a “really deep chasm that he would never escape” with an evil laugh as he packed sand around the giggling boy.

The McClain family enjoyed a quality dinner together, as it was Sunday, after all, before indulging in a some dumb romcom his mother had been dying to watch.

All the while, Lance could focus on nothing but the sun moving faster through the sky. He longed for night to fall as swiftly as possible, yet the day seemed to do nothing but drag on and on.

When the god-awful movie finally came to a close, Lance was the first to shower everyone with hugs and kisses and goodnights. As quickly as possible, he was boarded up in his room, the stupidest dilemma on his hands. He set out all four pairs of swim trunks he owned and stared.

It was so dumb. He shouldn’t be stressing about his choice of clothing, Keith wasn’t even wearing any! And then his dumb face got all red as he thought about the fact that the mermaid was, essentially naked. Which was dumb, it was all dumb. Lance was dumb.

But he really didn’t know if he should go with his red or his blue trunks and from there whether or not he wanted patterns or plain. He scratched his head and let out a sigh, finally deciding on a light blue pair with stripes of darker blue on the sides.

Putting on a swim shirt that matched in shade, with similar color blocking, Lance tried his best to still his rapid heartbeat. Obviously, he failed in doing so as he sucked in shallow, raspy breaths while attempting to silently leave his house.

As soon as the door shut gently, Lance had his sandals in his hand and he was running down the street, giddy with childish delight to see Keith.

~ ~ ~

He left without saying goodbye.

As soon as the sky bore the slightest colors of sunset, Keith was bouncing with nerves. The necklace was a weight wrapped around his wrist, the pendant cold against his burning skin.

He was going to do it. With the water bubbling past his face as he raced through the ocean toward the inlet, he was sure. He was going to do it.

Keith was going to steal Lance’s life.

Just as the sun disappeared behind the horizon, Keith surfaced a foot away from the outcropping, eyes wide, droplets of sea water rolling down his face, breathing hard. His heart wouldn’t stop pounding in his chest, and the words he wanted to say to Lance, practiced past perfection into something fake and unfeeling and cold, echoed about his mind.

_“Let’s go swimming, huh? See the stars away from all the lights? They shine so much brighter further into the ocean. Let’s go.”_

His stomach churned angrily, a lump forming in his throat as the necklace seemed to drag him down like an anchor wrapped around his wrist. Swimming in an agitated circle, Keith waited anxiously for Lance to show, each second passing taking a layer off of his confidence. He had to keep reminding himself that there wasn’t any way around this event. The only way to see Shiro again was through this boy.

And when Lance jumped over the rocks and into the inlet, every practiced word, every intentional action was shoved out of his mind. Instead of logic, his heart grabbed a hold of his senses and shook him.

He loved Lance with nearly every fiber in his body.

But, he knew better. He knew better than let himself bathe in the achingly sweet release of being in love and letting someone love you. Now, stark in the moonlight, he knew he was taking that love he radiating from Lance’s smile, and completely betraying him.

Keith was going to steal Lance’s life.

But, for one tantalizing moment, he allowed himself to gaze upon Lance, bask in the utter joy that Keith felt as the boy abandoned his sandals and came barrelling into the water. “Lance!” the mermaid let out, meeting him in shallow water and wrapping his arms around his shoulders, pulling him under and locking his lips to his.

Lance smiled against his lips as they trailed a little farther into the ocean, his hands resting on Keith’s hips. “Hi, Keith.”

With the sweetness of him still on his tongue, Keith forced a grin and let the vile-tasting lies drip out of his mouth. “I want to see the stars.” At first Lance looked confused, but smiling nonetheless. “Out in the ocean! The sky is gorgeous out there, no lights for miles all around. Just you, me, and the stars.” So maybe it wasn’t exactly what he had practiced, but it rolled off his lips easily, despite discomfort in his stomach.

As the smile fell off Lance’s face slightly, Keith knew something was amiss. “Oh, you don’t want to?” The mermaid played dumb, swallowing hard and biting his lip, avoiding Lance’s gaze and attempting to gain some pity points with a pout.

“No, no I’d love to!” Lance instantly jumped on the opportunity, tugging Keith’s hips a little closer to his own.

No matter the pain in his chest, the mermaid let a grin tug the corners of his lips up. “Good,” he announced excitedly, grabbing Lance’s hands. As he swam slowly backward, he pulled Lance onto his chest, their faces so close that Keith couldn’t resist a quick kiss.“Ready?”

“Ready for wha--” Lance started, Keith cutting him off with a powerful flick of his tail, sending the two speeding across the water, laughter bubbling off the mermaid’s tongue. The mermaid felt Lance wrap his legs around his tail, pressing his cheek against Keith’s chest.

With a stifled giggle, Lance muttered into Keith’s skin (he tried his hardest not to hyperfocus on the way his lips dragged gently across his chest), “Can’t this thing go any slower?”

“Shut up and trust me,” Keith replied, tightening his grip on the boy, pressing him even closer. They were both laughing from the thrill of simply being together when Keith began to slow, knowing he wasn’t too far from shore that he couldn’t make it back to land with his legs.

As Keith stopped completely, he helped Lance to roll off his chest until both were floating atop the water, staring at the sky. “Isn’t gorgeous?” the mermaid murmured dreamily, pretending he didn’t feel the burning sensation of the necklace around his wrist.

“Yeah, it really is! It’s amazing how much light pollution can do, huh?” Lance replied as his eyes traced the constellations, and Keith couldn’t help but snatch a look at him as his dark brown hair floated in a halo around his head.

And then Lance’s deep blue eyes were locked right on his own, a smile tracing his lips as the stars refracted their light, tiny pinpoints in his eyes. “I-I have something for you, Lance.”

The words were out of Keith’s mouth and Lance’s his eyes lit up; he looked excited. Little did he know that he should be anything but excited for what was to come. Hopefully, though, Keith’s cowardice didn’t show on his face as he gently smiled and unclasped the necklace from around his wrist.

Positioning themselves better in the waves, Lance treaded water while Keith gently swished the bottom of his tail to stay afloat. Holding up the necklace in between them, Keith grinned. “Do you like it?”

He watched as Lance melted, joy obvious on his features. “Did you really get this for me?”

“Especially for you,” Keith replied truthfully, although it wasn’t as full of truth as Lance could have possibly known. “Let me put it on you, Lance.” His words were deadly quiet in the stillness of the night, the stars beating down on them with cold, disapproving eyes.

Knowing that Lance was picking up on the shift in the mood, Keith looked away slightly and blushed with a smile, knowing it didn’t reach his eyes. Trembling, Keith slipped his arms around Lance’s neck and fumbled with the clasp, his fingers shaking.

Suppressing the urge to cry, Keith finally got the necklace secured and he trailed his fingers from the back of Lance’s neck, over his shoulder, and finally cupping his cheeks. Ever so gently, Keith pulled him toward him. The mermaid’s words were quiet, almost reluctant, “I love you, Lance.”

“I love you, Keith,” he replied with a smile as bright as the stars above them.

Without another word, Keith captured Lance in a kiss, passion flaring dangerously between them. Keith dug his fingers possessively into the soft flesh of his neck, Lance, in turn, tangled his fingers in the mermaid’s hair, pressing their lips infinitely closer.

Keith squeezed his eyes painfully shut and with a single powerful kick of his tail, they were bursting under the water. He began to feel concern against his lips as Lance tried to break their kiss.

* * *

But Keith just deepened the kiss, still spiraling downward, drowning the very boy he had saved no more than three weeks earlier. The kiss was suffocating Lance, and Keith could feel the heat emanating from the silver necklace burning around his neck.

He kept their lips pressed against each other even as Lance’s fingers no longer caressed the back of his neck, but raked jagged fingernails down his skin, tearing off . He kept their lips pressed against each other even as Lance’s knees angrily jabbed into his stomach, stifling a gasp of pain. He kept their pressed against each other until the heat of the necklace became too much for him to bare.

As Keith felt a sudden explosion of fiery heat, he jumped backwards, his vision consumed by white.

~ ~ ~

There weren’t words in the english dictionary to describe the feeling that overwhelmed Lance as soon as Keith attached his lips to his and propelled them toward the bottom of the sea.

Whatever he was feeling, he knew one thing: Keith was a motherfucking liar.

As soon as panic began to rise in his chest, his eyes opened against the kiss, the saltwater stinging, and Lance scratched his nails down the back of Keith’s neck, feeling the way he broke through the skin. But Keith’s dirty fingers just stabbed into Lance’s skin, keeping their lips smashed together despite his struggling.

Lance could feel the wretched ache beginning to spread in his chest as the goddamn mermaid hungrily stole his oxygen from him. Confusion slowly began to turn to realization as it dawned upon him that he was going to die at the hands of his savior. And, somehow, that made it a little worse.

He chose to ignore the fact that he was also going to die at the hands of someone he thought he loved.

The water enveloped them as they descended beneath the waves of the surface, of safety. Even as he clawed for something to grasp, something more than just his bare hands to fight Keith away from him, Lance couldn’t help the despair that filled him.

His anguish stemmed from a confusion that surrounded him as securely as the ocean water. Lance was in love with Keith, and now Lance had scraps of his skin stuck under his fingernails and his knees were punching into his abdomen as lack of oxygen caused the edges of his vision to blur.

His desperate flailing started to weaken, his body beginning to convulse as he suffocated against Keith’s lips. With the dulling of his senses, he couldn’t help the intrusive thoughts question why the fuck this mermaid (whether he loved him or not) was planning on killing him.

Just as the question blossomed in his mind, Lance felt Keith’s malicious lips pull off his own, and that his biting fingers were no longer pressing into the sides of his neck. With the absence of Keith’s lips to his own, he involuntarily sucked in a gasp of seawater, the tang and salt of the ocean invading his senses. He kicked his legs and flung his arms in all directions, trying to feel anything but the open, wasteless space of the water.

Just as the pain branched out of his chest and began crawling up his throat, and pricking dullness in to the tips of his fingers, another sensation began to blossom. And it was was so much more agonizing that drowning.

The fucking necklace that Keith had given him was burning hot, scorching his skin. Wrapped around his throat like a suffocating hand, it only got more and more painful, the pendant searing off the flesh above his sternum.

His vision went white as he lost control of any sort of motor function that he may have once had as an excruciating pain overtook him. Pain erupted from the sides of his neck, feeling like a knife slicing into the tender skin there. Head pounding, he stared unblinkingly at the whiteness that surrounded him, his entire body growing colder and colder until his veins filled with ice.

Just a moment ago, he had been burning inside the hottest furnace known to man, blood bubbling over to a boil, but almost as quickly as it had overwhelmed him, he was completely numb.

His world faded into a darkness unlike anything he’d ever experienced before as he lost any sort of feeling, his consciousness washing away with the tides.

///

When Lance woke up, he knew something was _off_. He couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but he felt like shit, that was for sure. His head was aching as he laid uncomfortably on unforgiving . . . pebbles? Rocks?

Blinking a few times, he looked about to figure out where he was. His brows furrowed in confusion as he gazed upon an expanse of sand, a large rock sat close by and something colorful was blurred in the background.

He was dreaming. He had to be dreaming. Because, as his gaze travelled around, there was no way in hell he was sitting on the floor of the ocean. So he slowly pushed himself into a sitting position, his head feeling like it weighed a million pounds.

And then he remembered.

He remembered as he choked on the water he was easily breathing. He remembered as he ran his hands over the scales that were crawling up his stomach, giving way to a long blue tail. He remembered as he clutched the necklace, the pendant biting into his palm.

Holding back tears, he let out a caterwaul of endless emotional turmoil, tumbling out of his mouth with such force he doubled over and beat his fists into the sand. He ran frustrated hands through his hair, pulling harshly as he tried not to let the tears fall.

Technically, they didn’t. They floated out of his eyes and caught like snowflakes in his eyelashes, bubbling around him. The tears were ones of anger, but as he crumbled in on himself, suddenly the pressure of everything that had just happened smashed into him.

His mom. His grandmom. His brothers. His sister. His nieces and nephews. Lance would never get to see them again. Never.

Keith was the one to blame.

So Lance had a lot of fucking anger and good old fashioned fist fight ready for the next time he saw that bastard. But he wasn’t about to sit around and wait for this motherfucker to show up. Struggling a bit with the whole tail thing, Lance finally picked a direction at random and started swimming.

It was actually kind of fun, gliding through the water, feeling the waves brush past his cheeks. But Lance was a little too wound up to enjoy the sensation. Noticing that the sand was on a slight downward slope probably meant Lance was going further out to sea, which was good, since he needed to find Keith, or someone who could lead him to that piece of shit.

It wasn’t long before he came upon a coral reef, alight with colors, plants and animals of every shape and size darting in and out of the complex structure.

“Do any of you know where I can find Keith? He’s a mermaid with black hair and a red tail?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, any living creature with a semi-complex brain scurried into some hidey hole or den.

Sighing, he could feel the air leaving his gills, tickling the skin there with an odd sensation. After taking a moment to collect himself and swim completely around the coral reef, Lance was just about to swim away when a voice boomed behind him.

“Are you Lance?”

The new mermaid jumped out of his skin and flipped around so quickly he smacked a fish right back into their hiding place with the end of his tail. In front of Lance stood a beautiful mermaid with a radiant golden tail highlighting his dark skin and bright eyes.

Lance didn’t manage to get a reply out, even though he looked the guy up and down a few times, taking in the yellow ear fins and the spiny projection from his back. Suddenly worried about his out state of ears, he slapped his hands over the side of his face and let out a groan as he felt the plastic-y smooth surface of his new ears.

“I’m going to take that as a yes. I’m Hunk.” He was quiet and had a rather sad demeanor as he faked a smile and extended his hand in greeting.

Clenching his jaw in concern, Lance tentatively shook the golden boy’s hand. “I need to find Keith. He’s a--”

“Yeah, I know Keith,” Hunk interrupted, looking at the ground beneath his tail and rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “There might be a little issue with that.”

Lance raised an eyebrow.

“Well, since you’re here, as in, you’re a _mermaid_ , well, uh, it means that Keith _isn’t_ anymore. That is, Keith, um, he isn’t a mermaid, anymore” he stuttered out, never meeting Lance’s eyes.

Clenching his jaw and furrowing his brow, Lance wasn’t really believing what he was hearing. “What in the ever-loving name of our lord and savior jesus fucking christ does that mean?” he ground out harshly, eyes narrowed as he inched toward the golden mermaid.

Even through his anger and confusion, he could see the small sigh and slump of Hunk’s shoulders as he finally brought his eyes up to meet Lance’s. “You love him, don’t you?”

Lance nearly jumped at the opportunity to scream out his hatred for the boy, but found the words stuck in his throat. Without a reply, Hunk continued sadly, “He betrayed you, as I’m sure you’ve come to realize by now. Keith took advantage of your love for him and used it to become human again.”

Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn’t anywhere along the lines of the truth. He wanted to think that Keith’s intent had been malicious, that mermaids were truly dark and twisted creatures. He wanted to think that Keith was going to skin him and use his fancy new tail for a purse and sell it to the highest bidder. He wanted to think that he was going to use Lance as bait to take down some mermaid menace under the sea.

Lance really didn’t want to think that Keith had been doing it all for someone he’d left behind. Some human that he hadn’t been able to see in the past year and a half, someone who stayed up late at night, still wondering where he was.

But who the fuck gave Keith the right to stab Lance in the back?! Lance had family that cared about him, family that could break apart with something like his disappearance. How was Lance supposed to excuse the crimes of someone if they put him in the same situation they were escaping from?

And now Keith was strolling down the beach on a pair of new legs, warm sun on his face, sand between his toes. Which left Lance hyperventilating on saltwater with half of a fish attached to his hips.

He didn’t really realize he was hyperventilating until Hunk put a warm, gentle hand on Lance’s shoulder. “Hey, I know it’s a lot to take in. You have to take a breath.”

While Lance technically _heard_ the words come out of Hunk’s mouth, there was no mental processing happening inside his head. So he continued to stare at the abyss of ocean that stood in front of him, taking in short, shallow gasps of water and feeling the way his gills flapped on his neck.

All of a sudden, Lance was shocked out of himself with a forceful slap across the face. “What the hell?” he choked out, instantly cupping his wounded cheek with one hand. In front of him was a defiant girl with an emerald green tail, dirty bandages tied around her chest and wire-framed glasses perched on her nose. “Who _are_ you?”

“I’m Pidge. And you need to get a grip.” She sighed, rolling her eyes at him when he pouted, still holding his stinging cheek. “I assume you’re Lance?”

He nodded, biting his lip and letting his hand fall from his face. “I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m doing.”

“Don’t worry, guppy. You can hang with us.” She turned to Hunk and raised an eyebrow. “City tour?”

Hunk nodded with a snort. “Let’s hope it’s more successful than the last.”

Laughing in agreement, Pidge and Hunk started swimming, hardly tossing a look over their shoulder to make sure Lance was still behind them. He had no idea what was going on, but if he had to bet, he’d say it was Keith’s fault.

Not that that was his default answer or anything like that.

~ ~ ~

Keith drew back from the heat and power that radiated from Lance’s glowing form, eyes wide and fearful. Anxiety churned in his stomach and he shot toward the surface, not wanting to be stuck two fathoms below the waves when he was turned back into a human.

Which would be any second now. Right?

As his head poked above the water, he was still very much a mermaid. Anxiety of a much different form reared its ugly head in his stomach. Keith noticed the light from Lance below him begin to fade and his mouth went dry.

What went wrong? What had he done? What hadn’t he done?

Immediately he tried to wrench his fingers under the bands that wound around his biceps, knowing Matt had used some type of fabric with silver infused in the stitches to bind him to the ocean. Yet, all he achieved was a small trail of blood extending from his arm and chunks of skin under his fingernails.

He couldn’t breathe. What the actual fuck had happened? Keith felt the way his kiss had stolen Lance’s humanity, had traversed its way into the necklace, ensuring his transformation.

It was a switch. The ocean would lose one son and gain another within the same moment. Equivalent exchange. But now the ocean had one too many fucking sons and Keith was alone, hands tangled in wet hair as the moon mocked him from so high in the sky. The stars were a little too bright for Keith to look at without being plagued with endless questions.

Pidge.

That mermaid and all her lessons, driven into him with berated words and laughed ridicule. What if the bitch had lied? What if he was choking on the salty air for no damn good reason?

Fueled by anger and a twinge of hope that he wasn’t right, he went speeding through the water toward The Treehouse. He let himself in, well aware that he might no longer be welcome, and curled his hands into fists when he found the place empty.

So he would wait. They would come back eventually. The house had an above water section, so if he was going to turn into a human again, at least he wouldn’t have to leave the comfort of his own home. Or, well, rented apartment? He wasn’t paying though . . .

Whatever. He was going to wait for Pidge and Hunk to come back to The Treehouse and make them fix his godforsaken situation. There was no way he was going to remain a mermaid after Lance paid the price for it.

As he was waiting, swimming a small circle around the main room of The Treehouse, conspiracies of all types fluttered through his head. He tried his best to ignore them, to turn them away before he got caught up in the “facts” of what Pidge’s true motive was.

Was she actually the one trying to get more victims for the Baku Garden? Did she really want to mess with Keith’s heart? Was she secretly a spy and knew Lance from 500 years ago because he too was some type of mystical being? Probably not, but in his state of mind, it didn’t seem all that out of the question.

His heart leapt into his throat as soon as he saw the algae move out of the way, voices lifting through the water.

Pidge was laughing at something Hunk had said when she entered the main room. It ended with a jagged, chopped noise of her breath catching. “What the fuck?” she breathed, genuine shock on her face. “Why are you here? Why are you a _mermaid_?”

When Hunk emerged from the tunnel, a concerned look was plastered on his face and a gasp dropped out of his mouth. “Keith?”

Lance, of course, was the last one to pop out of the tunnel, making the room seem utterly small. The disconcerting mixture of emotions that pounded into Keith just at the sight of Lance was almost mirrored on Lance’s face. But, as the new mermaid edged toward him, he noticed that Lance seemed to be driven by anger, the sharp curve of the fury in his eyebrows, his narrowed eyes, his lips pressed into a line.

Immediately, Lance decked Keith straight in the jaw.

Keith let out a groan of pain as he was flung to the side, his hand moving up to hold the aching side of his face. There were several exclamations from both Pidge and Hunk, but neither attempted to intervene as Keith slowly worked his way back to an upright position. “La--”

His words were choked to a stop as Lance’s fist flew into Keith’s abdomen, forcing him to double over in pain, a moan dripping like blood off his lips.

“What the fuck, Keith?!” Lance screamed out. “Look at me! Look at what you did to me!” His words were full of unadulterated rage for this boy as he grabbed him by the chin and forced his face upwards. “I was in love with you!” Cue another brutal punch to the side of the abdomen, followed by an aggressive uppercut, slamming Keith’s teeth together as he was propelled through the water.

“So was I!” Keith yelled, blood beginning to float out of his mouth, both hands clutching his stomach as he slid to crumple up on the ground. “So was I,” he repeated quieter, breathing heavy but never breaking eye contact. “And I’m so fucking sorry I messed it all up.”

A snort of laughter burst out from Pidge, looking cynical. “You’re not sorry.” Keith opened his mouth to protest, but only another cloud of blood trailed out. “It’s funny, actually. It’s fucking hilarious.” She ran a hand through her hair and swallowed harshly.

Keith noticed both Lance and Hunk shift uncomfortably. Pidge went on, “You left without even saying goodbye. I expected it from Matt but I really thought you were different.” She let out another broken laugh, finally leveling her eyes on Keith. “At least _he_ made it out of the water. At this point, I’m wishing you did too.”

“Pidge! I know I fucked up. I _know_.” He attempted to get up but just let out a blood-stained cough instead and settled for simply holding eye contact. “But, please. What happened? What did I do?”

She sighed. “You just said it yourself, Keith. You fell in love.”

Keith began to protest, gesturing to Lance angrily, confusion evident in his features. “I don’t understand.”

“He’s a mermaid now, Keith! You know what makes a human a mermaid.” Pursing her lips, Pidge huffed and crossed her arms. “ _Love_. And now _you’re_ in love with a mermaid. So, you not only condemned yourself down here, but you dragged this poor guppy down with you.”

Looking back and forth between the angry Pidge and the emotional Lance, Keith was at a loss for words. “There’s no way to go back now? I-It was all for nothing?”

Lance scoffed and bit his lip, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”

“Lesson number 100: forget everything I’ve taught you. Assholes don’t need my guidance anyway,” Pidge said darkly, her tone deathly serious and quiet. She darted past him and swam into the bedroom, flicking her tail for Hunk and Lance to follow her, leaving Keith alone, crumpled on the floor, broken down and bleeding.


	6. Beginnings and Endings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 60 years have past since Keith turned Lance into a mermaid. Things are . . . tense, to say the least. But as realizations unfurl and love begins to kindle anew, it seems that as one comes to the end, the other begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! The last chapter!  
> I so hope you guys all enjoyed reading this, I know I had an amazing time writing it and working with @viraseii ~  
> Shout out to my amazing beta, @communikate <3

Shiro was dead. 

Keith could feel it, heavily weighing him down from the tip of his tail to the top of his head. It had been almost 60 years since he had joined the ocean, and he had finally grown to accept the crimson scales and the bands wrapped around his arms (although he still had a scar from decades earlier when he’d tried to rip them off himself). But he had never come around to the idea that he would never see his brother again.

And, even though he hadn’t attempted to seduce any other humans in order to get his legs back, the sadness wrapped tightly around his heart was telling him that there was no reason to lust for the human world anyway.

He had woken up suddenly, the first sun rays of dawn beginning to trickle through the water, and he had known. Perhaps it was Atargatis letting him know he could stop yearning to leave her and the ocean.

Then, the rest of his day continued like any other, as he tried his best to ignore the heaviness in his chest. It was a day of mourning for him, but he soon came to realize that it was quite the opposite in the city. It was, in fact, Queen Luxia’s birthday, and there was to be a procession down main street with hippokampoi, carriages, and lots of screaming.

In all honesty, it was just an excuse for the bakeries to make some extra pearls by selling cookies with Luxia’s face on it, but Keith was used to the extravagant nature of the city of Atlantia.

And ever since he had gotten a job as an architect, he really knew what Pidge meant when she had introduced it as the “city where hopes and dreams die.” After twenty years of bullshit from his idiotic boss Blumfump, he switched to only working weekends.

Of course Queen Luxia’s birthday would fall on saturday. He had noticed the decorations when he had entered the city but wasn’t smart enough to duck out before the procession started (he obviously had swam all the way down to his office, ignoring all the other closed shops he passed, before realizing what was going on).

Thankfully the procession wasn’t all that long and Keith was able to slip out of the city before the queen’s speech began. Even as he swam away from the city, he could hear the crowd cheering for Luxia. It sent a chill down Keith’s spine at the thought of falling prey to the corrupt way society worked inside the city walls.

Keith was a sucker for splurging on cakes and buying the occasional statue from Ryner, so he needed the weekend job. But, there was no way in hell he would ever own a home in Atlantia and allow himself to be mind-swished by the Baku Garden and the one-track minds of the majority who lived there.

So instead he lived by himself about a ten-minute swim from the city and fifteen from The Treehouse in a cozy nook branching off from a large cavern that made homes for many other creatures. 

As he swam away from the city, he loitered around The Treehouse, waiting for the signal from a family of clownfish (they had become acquainted after about the fifth time they saw him trying to poke his head through the tunnel surreptitiously to see who was home) that Lance wasn’t there. 

Sure, it had been nearly 60 years since he had turned him into a mermaid, but the time seemed to slip by so fast in the ocean.

When the fish nodded, Keith gave a small smile and slipped inside The Treehouse, finally feeling like a second home, finally feeling comfortable again. “Keith! Don’t go to the city!” Pidge called out as soon as he started swimming into the cavern where the other two mermaids were.

“I know,” he groaned, pulling himself out of the water and flopping onto the rocks. “The queen looked gorgeous today while she rode her golden chariot with six imperial hippokampoi down main street,” he drawled in a high-pitched, petty voice.

“I knew we should have warned him yesterday,” Hunk added with a smile in his voice and a shake of his head. Then, a different type of smile slid across his lips. “Lance was asking about you before he went to work today.”

Keith let out a groan. “I told you 30 years ago I was done trying to win him back, Hunk.” He snorted and dropped his hands to cover his face. “God knows ‘Loverboy Lance’ has done enough to prove he’s way over me.”

It was Pidge’s turn to snort. “Yeah, definitely ready to settle down and commit. I’m pretty sure he saw the same guy _three times_ before picking up a new chick, which may have been a record for him.”

Throughout the years, Lance had earned a sort of reputation for being rather . . . flirtatious. Practically anyone who _knew_ where the secret clubs were in the city had slept with him. But Keith had to admit, it was bothersome whenever Pidge or Hunk brought up Lance. It still hurt.

At first, Keith had tried to make it up to Lance, tried to make him understand where he was coming from and that he really did still love him. He had flowers and snacks and letters (which were extremely expensive in the ocean) sent to Lance either through Hunk or a friend detailing his guilt. He’d tried several times to speak to him in person and was only successful almost fifteen years after the fact.

Lance had been coming out of the city while Keith was going in but he had turned and yelled after Lance, hurrying to catch up. “Can we talk?” Keith had asked breathlessly, reaching out to touch him but drawing his fingers back as Lance’s ice cold gaze pierced through him.

Keith took his silence as a yes and had continued talking. “It’s been fifteen years, Lance. Fifteen years and I can still remember the first time I saw you. I never told you because I thought it would weird you out.” He had taken note of the way Lance slightly shifted, seeing a bit of the ice in his eyes begin to thaw. “I saw you surfing with a few other people and all of you caught a wave. You were the only one to fall off your board. But you scrambled right back on and caught an _even better_ wave while your friends had started coming back out.

“You were cheering, pumping your fists in the air as you rode the wave all the way to shore, the biggest smile on your face.” With each and every word, Keith had noticed Lance slowly opening up to him, little by little. “I think I was already gone at that point. And then, of course, I saw you drowning and tried to save you, but in the end I was selfish. I was a selfish bastard and I used you for my own means. I betrayed what we used to have.”

Lance hadn’t said anything but he flicked his eyebrows up quickly and crossed his arms a little tighter.

“Lance, I know I might be far too late, but I want to make things work between us. I still love you. I think--I think I always will,” Keith had admitted honestly, baring his soul to him.

All Lance had said to him was, “My niece, Monika, would be 18 by now. So, yeah, Keith, you are a little too late.”

Then he had turned and left him at the gates of the city, staring into the brutally cold water that expanded before him. Yet, Keith had kept sending trinkets and momentos whenever he thought of Lance, although the frequency dwindled severely over the succeeding fifteen years. The last thing Keith ever send Lance was a silver bracelet he had paid nearly an arm and leg for. In the box was a note that read:

JUST IN CASE YOU WANT TO LEAVE.  
DON’T MAKE MY MISTAKE--I’M STILL PAYING FOR IT.

And that had been that.

Now, anytime Keith thought of Lance, he just complained to Hunk and Pidge about it, although sometimes the relationship between him and Pidge became a little strained when he brought up anything about leaving the ocean. He had been overjoyed when she didn’t outright refuse to make amends with him, although it had taken nearly ten years to get back in her good graces and several heartfelt conversations that included a lot of tears and naming calling. Pidge was one of his best friends and the most amazing mentor, and he was unbelievably thankful that he could patch up that relationship.

But he sincerely hated when Hunk joked about Lance. While, yes, it had been 60 years, it still hurt.

Keith couldn’t imagine it was the same for Lance as it was for him. Any time Keith attempted to find someone to waste time with or even something more, all he could imagine were Lance’s lips in the moonlight pressed deeply against his. There were only a handful of times he had gone home with a guy, and each time he couldn’t help but picture Lance.

It just wasn’t fair.

He was sure that there was no way that happened to Lance--how could he have gotten his reputation with that sort of binding mental trap? It wasn’t like Lance loved him anymore anyway.

~ ~ ~

Lance loved the city. He thought it was a novelty that he couldn’t find anywhere else but fathoms below the sea. The Queen was hilarious and glorious, even though her handmaidens were kind of strange, he always loved the speeches she gave. He enjoyed strolling the streets and taking the general atmosphere of the small markets and homely shops.

He especially enjoyed the fifth quarter, as it was called. The black market, the night clubs, the alcohol. He had spent more nights in the fifth quarter than he had anywhere else. While he wasn’t necessarily _proud_ of that fact, there really wasn’t much else to do in the damn mind-swished city anyway. 

And maybe he wasn’t _proud_ of the number of people he’d slept with in the past 60 or so years, but he’d been so earnest in the beginning, so ready to find love and embrace it with both arms. He had been so determined to fall out of love with Keith that he tried anything to erase the feeling of him, his kiss, his lips caressing his jaw, his hands following the curvature of his spine under his shirt.

Now all Lance had was a dumb necklace and the taste of Keith still lingering on his tongue, no matter how many other people he’d kissed since then.

It was that drive to find something to replace the hole that Keith had carved in his chest with his betrayal that forced him to seek for romance elsewhere. And yet, every so often, he would look at a mermaid with a crimson tail or jet black hair and begin to reach out, wondering if it could be him.

It wasn’t until nearly twenty-five years after he joined the ocean, and nearly twenty-five years of receiving the sweetest flowers, notes, and stupid chatskis, that he relented. Finally, he allowed his aching heart the dignity of soaking in the love that still existed inside his chest for the fucking mermaid that had condemned him.

Not even five years after he had accepted that there would always be a part of him that loved Keith, he got a package from him. Little did he know it would be the last. Laid gently inside with a note of forewarning had been a silver charm bracelet.

Lance had cried. He had held the bracelet close to his chest and curled up on the ground of The Treehouse, letting the sobs overtake him.

By refusing to give up hope that he could get his family back, he hadn’t given his heart proper time to mourn what he had lost. But in that moment, he had looked at the bracelet and known that there was no way he could ever make a human fall in love with him and steal their life away from them.

There was no turning back, no rewinding the clock. He was a mermaid and he was never going to be able to see his family ever again and it was Keith’s fault.

But it was also Keith who had made him realize that it was okay to grieve. Not that that made up for what he had done, but the heartfelt gifts he had been receiving for thirty years were obviously attempting to show his feelings, somehow compensate, in a small way, for what he did.

Lance had silently thanked Keith for the opportunity to live a little more peacefully. Whenever that peace was, although, disturbed by thoughts of Keith, Lance was lucky enough to have Hunk and Pidge to complain to.

Of course, running into Keith was inevitable when he frequented The Treehouse, but they mostly stayed away from one another, Lance shooting glares and Keith avoiding his gaze. And, Queen Luxia’s birthday, marking about 58 years since he’d been forced into the ocean, just happened to be the day he bumped into Keith once again.

The last time Lance had seen Keith was almost five years prior when Lance stopped by Ryner’s shop and noticed the black-haired, crimson-tailed boy perusing the carvings. He had fallen into a slightly trance-like state--not one hundred percent sure that the mermaid before him was Keith--and simply stood still, watching. But then he had turned his beautiful purple eyes on Lance.

Lance had turned tail and swam far and fast, his face flushed, his heart skipping a beat. There was no way he could have been expecting those gorgeous eyes to stare him straight in the soul, nor could he had predicted the way his heart fluttered in his chest at the mere sight of his past love.

He had tried so hard, so damn hard to forget about him. He had drowned himself in so many other pretty eyes, enjoyed so many other hands on his body, so many other lips against his own. Yet one look from his first love had him melting. 

It was fucking frustrating.

But, he was lucky enough to not see Keith in the city, and the thought of him didn’t even cross Lance’s mind. When he returned home, giggling about Luxia’s stupid speech (which basically said the same thing as last year) and hungrily waiting to dig into the baked goods he had bought with the queen’s face on them, all he wanted to do was enjoy the afternoon.

Obviously, Atargatis hated him.

As he swam into The Treehouse, he figured that Pidge and Hunk were lounging out of the water and he went straight into that room, not bothering to look around as he sniffed the brownie he was gearing up to eat. But when he popped his head above the water of the cavern, he lost his appetite immediately.

There was Keith, sprawled out on the rocks, looking fucking radiant as the sun streamed down on him through the skylight in the top of The Treehouse.

It just wasn’t fair.

After everything Lance had been through, every hookup, every person he’d gotten drunk with just to numb the sensations that Keith had burned into his skin, who gave him the right to barge into his house and look that damn pretty?

“Keith,” Lance ground out, his eyes narrowed, only his head and neck above the water. He probably looked gross, his hair stuck down to his forehead, water dripping down his face, his eyelashes all matted together, but it wasn’t like he should care what Keith thought of him, right?

Keith let out a sigh as he caught Lance’s eye. “Should I go?”

“Don’t you dare,” Pidge growled, flicking her gaze between both the boys, not missing the way Keith’s eyes widened in something akin to fright. “It has been 60 fucking years, and I can’t handle it any longer!”

Both Lance and Keith were too afraid to say anything, their mouths hanging open in anticipation of something coming out, but nothing did. “The goddamn sexual tension every time either one of you brings up each other, oh my god!” Her frustration came out in a small scream, her hands splayed wide beside her head as she leveled her eyes on each of the boys individually. “You have two options here boys,” she began, her words emphasized by an aggressive nod from Hunk. “Either you make up and make out already, or you _have_ to stop talking about each other with us.”

“By Atargatis, I agree,” Hunk said with a sigh, raising his eyebrows at them. When neither of the boys moved, nor did they even look at each other, Hunk rolled his eyes. “You heard her, get out of here and get done what you need to get done!”

And with that, Lance was scurrying through the passageways and bursting out of The Treehouse, his heart hammering in his chest. Keith wasn’t but a moment behind him.

Lance was trembling as he felt Keith’s eyes on him, the tension in the air awkward and heavy. “I’m not making out with you,” Lance declared, crossing his arms and turning to finally face the other mermaid.

“Aw, what a pity,” Keith spit out, rolling his eyes and blatantly refusing to continue conversation by turning tail and swimming away.

But there was no way in hell Lance, the one who actually had the right to be angry, was going to let this slimy sea slug swim away without him getting the final word in. “You couldn’t pine over me enough for the first thirty goddamn years out here and now you have nothing to say?”

That made Keith stop in his tracks.

When he turned around, Lance couldn’t deny the tug in his chest at the expression that now masked his face. He looked exhausted. “Do you _actually_ want to have conversation about the fact that you’re going to loathe me forever, Lance?”

But when Lance only succeeding in getting a pathetic, “W-Well . . .” out of his mouth, Keith just exhaled somewhere between a sigh and a small laugh.

“That’s what I thought.”

~ ~ ~

With the weight of Lance _not_ wanting to make up (or out) with him sitting heavily on his chest, Keith allowed himself to wander into the city, lament dragging his tail. What Pidge said was right, it had been 60 years and they hadn’t even attempted to mend their relationship. In fact, they had managed to maintain mutual friends, a mutual _home_ , and still managed to avoid even seeing one another.

It was, frankly, insane.

Soon enough, Keith found himself in a vaguely familiar section of the city, squat houses with dim lighting, the smell of mud drifting in the water. Anguish and lack of self-control lead him down a narrow alleyway and he pushed his way past a heavy metal door with a graffiti tag boldly painted across the entrance. Then, Keith was awash in light and sound.

The mermaids were crammed shoulder to shoulder, sweat glistening in tiny bubbles floating close to skin, the stench of alcohol permeating the water. Memories of nights after rejected gifts and the taste of Lance still potent on his tongue, the alcohol helped to numb the pain and distance the ache of longing. 

After giving his final present to Lance--the silver bracelet--there were two weeks that Keith could hardly remember. There were brief flashes in his memory of sloppy kisses, hands running up and down his back, feeling him up through the haze of alcohol and sticky smiles. It was an attempt to shove the feelings for Lance away, wipe the taste of him off his tongue by drowning in booze and one-night stands.

Those two weeks had just been the beginning of the depression he dove into headfirst after he gave up on Lance. Attempting to stop thinking about Lance obviously didn’t work; it took about a year for him to finally begin to recover and get used to the idea that Lance would never love him again.

An eternity without Lance.

He had come to accept that even though he was so close, they would never make up over the years. It didn’t matter that Lance was never more than 1500 fathoms away. It didn’t matter that he could have seen Lance countless time if he had only hung around The Treehouse a _little longer_. It didn’t matter that the days that Lance had been in love with him had been the best days of his life.

It didn’t matter because Lance would never love him again.

Yet, he had foolishly let his heart flutter awake, begin burning the fire of hope once again as soon as Lance had popped his head above the surface of the water in The Treehouse.

Since those two weeks twenty-five years ago, he hadn’t been back to the club. He knew it was a mistake to head back, to get stuck in the same cycle as last time. He knew it was a mistake and yet he couldn’t help himself. Lusting for some kind of escape from the crushing thoughts of Lance was too powerful, too achingly devastating to deny.

He slipped right back into the swing of things. Not bothering to excuse himself, he shoved his way past the intoxicated mermaids grinding on each other with a grimace. Keith finally made it to the bar in the back of the club. Ordering the ocean’s equivalence to two shots of whiskey, Keith settled onto a bar stool and cradled his face in his hands, looking at the engravings on the stone table without really reading them.

After his first two shots, he was much calmer, his mind a little fuzzier, his despair a little further away. He remembered the way it had started almost twenty-five years ago. A couple of shots, a smooth, low voice whispering in his ear, a thin hand running fingers down the length of Keith’s arm.

This time around, a skinny mermaid with a dark purple tail ordered a shot from the bartender before turning and resting one elbow on the countertop, a suggestive smile on their lips.

And then Keith was linking his arms around a stranger’s neck, feeling their hands clasp around his lower back, pulling their hips together roughly. For a brief moment their eyes were locked, but Keith couldn’t even figure out what color they were before their lips were pressed harshly against each other. Despite the taste of alcohol that saturated their kiss, all Keith could taste was salt and cinnamon and moonlight.

Lance was lingering on his tongue. So he kissed the stranger harder, wrapped his fingers in their hair, took their lip between his teeth, and pressed closer against them.

Yet, Lance’s lips and Lance’s hair and Lance’s hips completely and utterly occupied his thoughts, shoving out any sort of enjoyment Keith could’ve taken from his encounter with the stranger who was so _not_ Lance.

Twenty-five years ago, Keith would have trailed his fingers down the stranger’s chest and asked them to buy him a drink to attempt to wash away Lance.

But, at that point, Keith knew there was no getting that fucking boy off his skin, off his tongue. There was nothing he could do. So he broke off from the stranger and patted them awkwardly on the shoulder with a slight grimace and a short apology before swimming away.

Hiding in the bathroom, Keith dragged his hands down his face and let out a sigh. Gripping the sink in front of him and staring at himself in the mirror, Keith noted the way his eyes seemed to droop and his lips seemed to be turned in a constant frown. His tipsy mind blurred the image of himself, but even he could tell the anguish was seeping through his features.

_Fuck_.

The thoughts of Lance were spiraling through his mind like a whirlpool. So more whiskey it was. As he ordered two more shots for himself, knowing that with the fuzziness already clouding his vision two more would push him into a warm and staggering state of mind.

As the first shot burned his throat on the way down, his mind tumbled with caged thoughts attempting to break free. But with the second (really his fourth, but who was counting?) shot, he let his eyes drift closed, relishing in the sweet swaying sensation and the numbness of his mind. There was a sort of giddiness, a sort of lightness that came about as he felt the alcohol take hold.

As he slowly opened his eyes, he let a smirk slip onto his lips and he pushed his way into the throng of intoxicated mermaids moving hypnotically to the music pulsating in the water. Not even remotely close to being in time with the music, Keith let himself loose a bit, swaying his hips back and forth and drunkenly shimmying his arms above him with a smile on his face. 

Then, he stills in his awkward dance as his eyes train on the end of a shimmering blue tail. He’s not quite sure why it draws his attention as it does, but before he can really think about it, the tail disappears behind someone else.

Sloppily pushing his way past others, he emerged on the other side of the dancefloor. He turned with a pout on his lips. It had already been about a thirty seconds, so he decidedly put this game of hide and seek in the “difficult” category. A laugh bubbled off his lips. He dove back in, trying to make his blurry vision clearer by blinking rapidly.

Sure enough, he saw the blue tail a few people away from where he was, and with a little shoving, he finally made it to the mermaid, stumbling into them, his elbow connecting into his back.

“Oh, haha, sorry,” Keith slurred with a laugh as he put what he hoped was a flirtatious smile on his lips. Placing a hand on the mermaid’s shoulder, Keith looked into their eyes and saw the most gorgeous stormy blue eyes framed by long lashes, spiky brown hair looking deliciously silky, pink lips seeming utterly kissable.

But, he knew all that.

Keith knew that hate colored the narrowing of his eyes and that the brown hair was amazingly smooth between his fingers and that his lips were the most perfect to kiss. Because Lance was staring down at him, his hands balled in fists at his side while Keith allowed himself to scan his body with an appreciative eye.

From the look Lance gave him, Keith knew that Lance wasn’t even close to drunk. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that this conversation probably wouldn’t go very well, especially with the newfound information that Lance was sober. Nevertheless, Keith put his hand on Lance’s other shoulder, drawing him ever-so-slightly toward him.

“Lance,” Keith breathed, unable to help himself as he gazed into those stormy eyes, filled with something that Keith’s drunk eyes couldn’t decipher. But . . . it didn’t look quite like loathing, which Keith took as a success.

Keith watched as Lance swallowed harshly, his fists tightening at his sides. “Keith. What do you want?” he ground out, his jaw clenched.

With a sigh, Keith bit his lip and let his hands trace down Lance’s arms before falling back in front of him, his fingers intertangling. “Ever since I saw you, I haven’t been able to get you out of my head. I’ve tried everything, Lance, everything to get over you. But I _can’t_.” 

Lance’s chin was wavering, his head shaking side to side as he kept emotions guarded, his lips twitching downward but never quite reaching a frown. “No, Keith. No. This club was supposed to be _my_ place to forget _you_. You can’t just come barging in here and spill your heart out and expect things to change.”

As if he didn’t hear a word that came out of Lance’s mouth, Keith continued, his words stumbling over each other, “I love you. I’ve been in love with you since I dragged you on shore and saved your sorry ass!”

“I wish that you had let me drown!” Lance yelled, digging his fingers suddenly into Keith’s shoulders, shaking him violently. 

Keith’s intoxicated mind wasn’t quite comprehending what Lance was telling him. So, like an idiot, he let a mumble fall off his lips, “But, but then you w-would’ve died.”

“Yeah!” Lance screamed incredulously, raising his eyebrows and getting dangerously close to Keith’s face, fire alit in his eyes. “It would have been better than being fucking trapped down here for all eternity! But instead, your selfish ass pulled me under, forcing me to live out the rest of my life while my family grows up and moves on _without me_!”

Keith felt like he should have been crying. The sorrow that sat heavily in his chest _hurt_. 

But all he could do was stare at Lance. Stare at Lance while he berated Keith over something he spent 60 years lamenting. Stare at Lance while his fingernails gouged his skin off his shoulders and shake him back and forth. Stare at Lance with such an empty, cavernous ache in his chest that he had no idea what to do with.

“But you know what’s the worst part of it all?” Lance asked, a broken chuckle stabbing the tension between them. “I still fucking love you.”

And just like that, a fire ignited in Keith. A fire so strong he felt like the ice that had been clutching his heart ever since Lance punched him in the face 60 years ago was finally beginning to thaw. Keith could hardly breathe as he stared at Lance.

Swallowing harshly, he stuttered out, “You-you love _me_?”

“God, don’t make me say it again,” Lance sighed with a pained expression, running a hand stiffly through his hair and looking away.

But Keith could hardly hear him because his own heart was beating so loudly in his ears. He felt dizzy, and it was more than the alcohol buzzing through him. Every motion was something that Keith vaguely recognized, every facial feature, even the soft curve of his lips as he pouted. It was all so familiar. And Keith could never get tired of it.

It finally seemed, he realized hazily, that he would not spend an eternity without Lance. Rather, it seemed, for the first time in a long while, that he had hope.

_Lance loved him._

~ ~ ~

As soon as Keith had made it very clear that he was done pining for Lance outside of The Treehouse, a painful shock wave had run through him. Something unexpected and nearly unidentifiable. Something akin to heartbreak.

It wasn’t like Lance _hadn’t_ moved on, but hearing the words, so final and so distinct, struck him like a freight train. It was really over. Keith was done with him.

And Lance was done with Keith, too.

Right?

That’s what he kept telling himself even as he swam down the city streets, slipping into the darkened side of the city, the fifth quarter. Graffiti lit the sloping, crumbling walls of run-down shacks aflame in color and creativity. Lightly, Lance could feel the pulsations of music drifting through the water from a handful of nearby nightclubs and bars, accompanied by the faint scent of sweat and alcohol.

The sense of familiarity calmed his nerves as he sauntered inside the club, pushing open the heavy door to revel in the bright lights and noise of the small space.

Of course, as soon as his mind began to wander, his eyes tracing the pretty mermaids in the room, a flash of a crimson tail caught his attention, jolting him back to reality.

It couldn’t be Keith. He was being stupid.

So he turned away from where he had seen the red mermaid and instead traced his slightly-trembling fingers up their arm and shoulder to cup the back of someone’s neck. The stranger was so wasted they took one look at Lance and gave a lopsided smile before linking their hands behind the small of Lance’s back, pulling them tightly together.

They somewhat moved to the beat of the music together, pressed against each other, laughter bubbling off the stranger’s lips as Lance attempted to block out his thoughts. 

His mind was swirling with thoughts of Keith. There was hardly a time when he wasn’t thinking about that goddamn mermaid. It had been twenty-five years that he had been living with the violent weight of displaced love in his heart. He had accepted that he was once in love with Keith and that those feelings still swirled inside him, but the rage and pain consumed all of that, leaving him discontent, to say the least.

But now he was wrapping his fingers in a stranger’s hair and enjoying the feeling of their fingers on his hips.

It could only last for so long, though. Soon enough, the stranger had their lips locked on Lance’s jaw and he was pushing them off him rather harshly. Because, of course, none of them could kiss him like Keith could. And none of them could kiss him without igniting a firework of painful emotions. Especially if he was sober.

And then a harsh elbow was jabbing itself into the soft flesh above his hip bone, a slurred apology slipping through the water, past the loud music and just quite making it to Lance’s ears. He turned with a sneer to see who in the name of Atargatis was elbowing him.

Lance was enraptured immediately. There was nothing he could do but stare helplessly into the perfect purple eyes that he had fallen in love with so many years ago. Those gorgeous eyes that he had managed to _stay_ in love with through all the shit. 

Keith.

Keith, right in front of him. Keith, looking completely and utterly and breathtakingly beautiful. Keith, smiling a goofy smile that looked just a little too big for his face. Keith, flushed cheeks and red, bitten lips looking perfectly kissable. Keith, wild hair stuck up in all sorts of awkward still managing to look radiant.

“Lance,” he breathed, his tongue seemingly a little too big for his mouth as he slurred even the one syllable of his name.

Keith was totally wasted.

But, _jesus_ , did he look good. And he was staring at Lance with nothing short of love in those eyes, wide and bright.

Lance wasn’t going to let on beautiful boy, drunk and smiling, throw him off his game. Steeling his expression, he put his hands on his hips and staring Keith down unflinchingly.

And Keith went on to pour his damn heart out, tugging on Lance’s own heartstrings, plucking them so damn effectively, it nearly ripped the words out of Lance’s tongue, “I still fucking love you.”

Lance clenched his hands into fists and kept his eyes trained on Keith’s wide, innocent ones, stuck deep in an intoxicated state.

Keith repeated Lance’s words, letting them tumble out of his mouth, uncertainty and incredulitility lacing his tone.

“God, don't make me say it again,” Lance groaned, running his hands through his hair and turning his blushing cheeks away from Keith’s glassy stare.

Keith smiled and it looked unnatural on his lips, like the alcohol was summoning a grin while emotion stayed strictly trapped away. And then, he slowly took his hands off Lance to instead cup his own cheeks. He began scarily mumbling, staring somewhere around Lance’s belly button with unseeing eyes.

“Alright, we are _not_ talking about this with you as drunk as you are,” Lance muttered, rolling his eyes. He wrapped an arm around Keith’s midsection, pulling then close, flesh pressed against burning flesh as they shoved through the crowd. 

Keith nuzzled his head into the crook of Lance’s neck with a small noise of happiness, nearly going limp in Lance’s arms. “Hey! I'm not carrying you, dumbass. Move that tail, come on,” Lance groaned as they slipped out of the club into the dark street of the fifth quarter.

“You smell so nice,” Keith muttered into Lance’s collarbone, sticky lips dragging over his sensitive skin, making Lance shudder.

“And _you_ smell like shit,” Lance shot back, quickening their pace just slightly, unsure of how long he would last, feeling the short hot breaths on his neck and the grasping fingers splayed warmly on his hip.

Keith’s comments slowly dissolved into incoherent babbling as they neared The Treehouse, his body growing heavier in Lance’s hold.

Of course, as Lance dragged Keith through the water and into The Treehouse, pulling him by the wrists through the small tunnel that lead into the main room, both Hunk and Pidge began screeching.

Lance hardly has a second to shove the officially-passed-out Keith onto the ledge of dry land before Hunk was checking Keith’s pulse while yelling, “Oh my god, is he dead? Keith, can you hear me? Lance, did you kill him? Keith?! He’s dead! Ah, oh my god, he’s dead! Who killed him? Lance? Lance?!” 

“He's not dead!” Lance screamed out while Pidge was pounding her fists into his chest, adding to the chaos of noise with animalistic howling.

“I told you so! I! Told! You! So!” Pidge sang out, a smirk on her lips as she gave up on smacking him and twirled in a circle around the poor boy.

Lance dropped his face into the water and sighed, rubbing his eyes. “Hunk, stop trying to find his pulse, I can assure he’s not dead, just drastically drunk. And Pidge, yeah, I know, you can stop dancing about it, alright?” he huffed out, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms.

“You love him! And he obviously still love you, so what’s the hold up? Hunk and I’ll leave if you want some privacy?” Pidge said suggestively, raising her eyebrows.

With another sigh, Lance tried to contain the blush that was spreading across his cheeks. “Whatever. Besides, it would practicably be date rape if I tried anything with him now. Look at him,” Lance gestured to Keith, lying limply, one arm still dangling in the water, his neck at a dangerously awkward position from Hunk repeatedly jabbing his fingers into the soft flesh, trying to find a pulse.

“Okay, I know you said he wasn’t dead, but really, please, can someone check his pulse? I really couldn’t find it!” Hunk yelped, looking panicked.

Lance rolled his eyes and swam over to him, gently tilting his head back to a more normal position.

“They grow up so fast!” Pidge squealed quietly, acting like a proud mother watching her son get back together with his crazy ex. Which is something a mother really _shouldn’t_ be proud of. Lance just shook his head and timidly pressed his fingers against the side of Keith’s neck, finding the steady pulse beating against his fingers.

“He’s not dead, Hunk, don’t worry,” Lance said monotonously, absentmindedly pushing some of Keith’s hair to the side. 

Hunk clasped a hand to his chest and let out a sigh of relief. “Okay, now that _that’s_ out of the way, what the hell happened?” He asked, pushing himself out of the water and lounging against the back wall of the cave.

Pidge sat next to him while Lance remained in the water in front of the them, feeling like he was being interrogated. “I was, uh, upset so I went to a club to, I don’t know, forget about Keith, I guess, because he had pretty much laid it straight that he was done trying and like, trust me, I thought I was over him, but like, dear god, that hurt. So, of course, I went to drink that feeling away. And, uh, Keith was, well, he was there.” He ran his hands down his face. “I didn’t even get a drink.”

“Man, he’s going to be so confused when he wakes up,” Pidge laughed.

~ ~ ~

“Oh my god, I’m so embarrassed,” Keith muttered into his hands. “I can’t believe I passed out while you were dragging my ass back here.”

“Yeah, you’re lucky I couldn’t understand half of what you were mumbling on the way back here or I think you’d have a lot more to be embarrassed about,” Lance let out, a small smile gracing his lips. Keith drunk it all in. Even as his headache pounded against his skull, Keith wanted nothing more than to press his lips against Lance’s, taste the sweetness that was so much more intoxicating than whatever he had been drinking the night before.

The two mermaids were slowly swimming. When Keith had woken up, they had decided to find somewhere else to go, even though Pidge had volunteered to leave with a mischievous smile. They both knew where they were going, despite not having said a word about their destination with one another.

Then, quietly, almost tentatively, Lance began, “I have to ask, Keith. You _know_ I have to ask.” He kept his eyes trained forward even as Keith’s eyes burned into him. “Who?”

Keith just blinked at him, raising his eyebrows slightly in gentle question.

“Who was it? Who were you doing it for?”

Keith let’s a small gasp drop from his lips and he turned his gaze away from Lance. “His name was Shiro. My brother.”

Lance nodded slowly, realizing that they had reached their destination, drawing a pause in their conversation. The outcropping stood only five feet in front of them and when they peeked their heads above the water, Keith’s heart tugged painfully in his chest.

The inlet. The cove. The secret meeting place for star-crossed lovers.

Remarkably, it appeared mostly unchanged, although it seemed like the sand had been eaten up by the tide, or perhaps the ocean had grown a little stronger, a little larger. Nonetheless, Keith swam forward and pulled himself onto the rock, staring at the blue-grey sky, the sun beating down on them from high in the sky.

As soon as they were settled, sitting in the same places they had a lifetime ago.

“Shiro.” Lance said, causing Keith to bristle at the mere mention of his name. “Tell me about him. Tell me why was his life worth more than mine.”

Keith wanted to rebut the statement somehow, tell him that no, Shiro was not worth more than his life. But, it didn’t matter anyway, because Keith had still stolen it for the simple idea of seeing his brother again.

“I-I never knew my biological parents. I’m half American, half Korean, so neither of my parents wanted me and I was placed in foster home after foster home.” He swallowed stiffly, clenching the rock underneath his fingers. “There was one truly awful home I was in when I was around eight, I think. I--” he stopped short, taking a deep breath and squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, “Well I guess it doesn’t matter what happened to me there other than that I met Shiro.”

His tone immediately changed even just as he said his brother’s name. “Shiro may have been the first person who’d ever truly been kind to me. He would whisper the right ways to behave to avoid getting on the mother’s nerves and sneak me snacks from the kitchen. And he would _talk_ to me. Just . . . confide in me, make me feel like I had worth to him, like I was worth more than the previous three foster homes I’d been to. Shiro made me feel like a human being again.

“But, I didn’t stay at that foster home for long because child services stepped in. After that, I was sent to the other side of the state to live with a family while Shiro was sent to a home that prepared older teens for life on their own. I remember sobbing as the child services guy dragged me away from Shiro.”

Keith let out a broken chuckle, staring blankly at the clouds as they floated by.

“Life went on, I guess. But I never stopped referring to Shiro as my brother and it drove my foster parents insane how often I talked about him. And then, one day I came home from school and there he was.” Tears formed in Keith’s eyes as he bit his lip and tried to keep talking through the pain. “There he was. Shiro. Dressed in a navy outfit. He had come to say . . . goodbye.”

Keith attempted to compose himself, avoiding looking at Lance at all costs. “He was to be deployed the next day. I’ve never cried so hard. A-after that, the next time I saw him, he was covered in scars and had lost a fucking _arm_ in combat. But, it was like nothing had changed. Shiro had three months to be home and my foster parents were nice enough to let Shiro stay with us.”

He took a deep breath, lamenting how long-winded his story had become. But he dared not look at Lance to gauge his reaction. Keith would surely cry if he looked at Lance while talking about Shiro. Too much had happened for that.

“Then I was lucky enough to go on spring break while Shiro was home. What better place to go than the beach, huh? And, uh, well, I let myself get distracted. I guess the rest of it is history, right?”

Finally, Keith allowed himself to look over to Lance, who was staring at him with wide, soulful eyes. “He sounds like he meant a lot to you,” Lance said quietly.

“Yeah. Yeah, he really did,” Keith replied quietly. “But, he’s dead now. So, there’s nothing the land offers me anymore. I’ve, well, I’ve really felt empty since then. It scares me thinking that I could die with this feeling suffocating me, Lance.”

He nodded slowly. “I-I know what you mean,” Lance conceded in a small voice. “My grandmom died seven years after I joined the ocean. My mom, thirty. I guess it’s the only blessing Atargatis bestowed upon us, trapped under the ocean.”

“I guess so. It does give a sense of closure, I assume. Maybe Atargatis even lets their souls rest knowing what really happened to us,” Keith continued solemnly.

Lance gives a nod, wringing his hands in his lap and looking back to the horizon.

“You know I would take it all back,” Keith blurted out. “Even if I had been able to become a human again, I would never have done it if I had known--no, if I had _realized_ \--how much you meant to me. All I want is for you to be happy, Lance. And I fucked it all up. And there’s nothing I can do to make it better. But, please, _please_ know that I’m sorry.” He grabbed Lance’s hands and intertwined their fingers, staring into his eyes, pain evident in his purple irises. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“I didn’t mean it.”

That certainly wasn’t the response Keith was expecting to hear, and one million ideas ran through his head as he squeezed Lance’s hands, waiting anxiously for him to continue.

“What I said last night, about, uh, wishing I had never met you? That, that I had wished you’d let me drown, uh, instead of saving me?” He looked away, but held tightly onto Keith’s hands. “I didn’t mean it.”

Keith was at a loss for words even after the brief explanation, but their palms were still pressed tightly against one another, and Lance slowly brought his eyes up to meet Keith’s.

“Although it’s taken 60 years, I think--I think I’m ready to move on. I think I’m ready to forgive you.”

“R-really?” Keith breathed, tears pooling in his wide eyes as he stared into the deep stormy blue of Lance’s gaze.

He nodded slowly. “I’ve been in love with you this whole damn time, Keith. But, I was really fucking hurt, and I couldn’t see through that for, well, I guess 60 years, huh?”

“And you know I’ve never fallen out of love with _you_ ,” Keith let out with a smile as bright as the sun overheard. “I-I really can’t fuck this up again. So, uh, maybe can we try taking this slow?”

Lance chuckled, squeezing their held hands tightly, his skin smoother than it had been, not roughed by the workings of humanity. “As long as you promise me to love me, and only me, and never lust for anyone or anything, in or outside the water, I don’t think we’ll have a problem.” His voice was sweet and quiet and held the sort of tone that Keith had been aching to hear for decades.

“I could never love anyone other than you, Lance.” He responded with an endearing smile. “And as long as _you_ promise me never to use that damn silver bracelet I got you. If-if I lost you again, I don’t think I could handle it,” Keith revealed quietly, never tearing his eyes away from Lance’s.

“The terms and conditions don’t sound too bad, I guess,” Lance teased with a smile, dropping his forehead to press against Keith’s. And in a moment of color, Keith could hear his heartbeat in his ears, his palms a little sweaty as memories assaulted his senses. The first time they kissed, sweet and kind and full of joy. The last time they kissed, wicked and twisted and full of pain.

But this moment was new, all its own. It was achingly hopeful. “I just want everything to go back to the way it was when we first met.

“No. It’ll be _better_ ,” Keith whispered with a small smile.

Keith could feel the warmth of Lance’s breath and through half-lidded eyes could see the way Lance’s tender lips were slightly parted. Tentatively leaning in, Keith’s heart constricts in his chest, worry clutching him. If he ruined what they were working to rebuild, he would never recover. 

But Lance, feeling the hesitation in Keith’s light gasp, surged forward, connecting their lips. After so long, betrayal forcing them to turn to others to wipe the taste of them off their tongue, they relax into each other, finally feeling whole again.

The kiss was gentle and sweet and filled with a quiet yearning to start anew. 

Lance was holding his hands tightly, their fingers intertwined and their lips pressed divinely together. In that moment, Keith existed only where he was touching Lance, white noise numbing everything else. Nothing mattered but his hands, clasped with Lance’s, and his lips, moving tenderly in sync with the love of his life.

Keith was getting a second chance. A second chance at something he had painfully thrown away for a dream that came crashing down. All the anguish, sorrow, and pain that had plagued them both was drawing out with the tide, leaving soft, perfect sand in its wake.

It wasn’t going to be easy, moving forward after everything that had happened, but in that blissful moment, it seemed so simple.

In the light of the afternoon sun, they had spoken their vows, made their promises to one another, pledging that it would be them, and only them, that would take their heart and make it whole again.

Love blossomed in his chest, wrapping warmly around his heart as he smiled against Lance’s lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you!! It means so much to me to anyone and everyone who took time out of their day to read this. I am so proud of how far this piece has come and I couldn't be happier with the feedback I've been receiving! Thank you all and I hope you enjoyed reading this :)  
> If you want to contact me about this, about other pieces, or you just want to talk, my tumblr is @twohundrednine  
> Thank you!!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Please leave a kudos if you enjoyed and comments mean the absolute world to me, so please leave one if you feel like making my day :)


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